Corruption and Poverty

by Ducky Paredes
from MALAYA

“One can say that corruption in its more extreme manifestations is a symptom of poverty, both a result and a cause of poverty.” – Ducky Paredes

Ambassador Alistair MacDonald of the Delegation of the European Union in the Philippines, in speaking before the 2nd Bisyon 2020 Integrity and Human Rights Conference, said about the Ampatuan massacre: “I want to underline that for public opinion around the world, this was not a massacre in Maguindanao, nor was it a massacre in Mindanao. It was a barbaric act in the Philippines, and it is the international image of the Philippines that is tarnished by this despicable crime.

“That image can be restored only if timely action is taken to ensure that all responsible are brought to justice, and if convicted are punished with the full rigor of the law,” he added.

Of course, as with all cases that end up in our courts, time seems to stop as justice moves at a snail’s pace.
And even our justice system can be corrupted. And that – corruption – is the real problem. Businessmen finance political parties (illegally) to assure that they can collect on future favors; we bribe police to avoid traffic tickets and officials with kickbacks on contracts they approve. The Ampatuan massacre is a direct result of corruption.

“For accountability and enforcement to be effective,” says the ambassador, “the public and the civil society should be informed and interested and reject corruption and fraud as something which is part of the normal lubricant of government business.”

“One can say that corruption in its more extreme manifestations is a symptom of poverty, both a result and a cause of poverty. But my point remains that no country is free of this risk, and no-one is in a position to speak as if they were a lecturer or a preacher, smug in their freedom from sin. Greed is universal,” he added.

What the next President has to do is to raise the risks for the corruptor by sending more of them to jail. Maybe if he can do that, we c an move away from being the 11th in the listing of the world’s most corrupt countries. Then, maybe, that might also impact on our very high poverty levels.
On the other hand, if we elect a President who will not actively pursue a clean-up of the bureaucracy and continue with business as usual, things can only get worse for us all.

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According to a survey done by Pulse Asia, nearly seven out of ten Filipinos are unaware of the party list system. For the awareness to be so low even as this is already the fifth time that we are electing congressmen under the Party-List system forces us to reconsider the worth of the party-list and whether we even need to continue with the party-list system.

The idea of having party-list congressmen was that of giving wider representation to groups that would have no representation if our congressmen all came from the usual congressional districts. Without the party-list who would represent “labor, peasant, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, women, youth, and such other sectors as may be provided by law, except the religious sector” in the language of the Constitution?

Now, however, we have regular congressmen elected by legislative districts running as party-lists to give way to their relatives who want to also get into congress. This should tell us that the party-list system is not working. Others prefer to run under party-lists since it is an easier way of getting into congress. In fact, the system has been corrupted and the same persons who would otherwise be running as regular congressmen have invaded the ranks of the party-list. This means that the unrepresented sectors are still unrepresented since the same person who would otherwise be congressman is now a party-lister..

It is only in the National Capital Region where a majority (51%) of the voters is aware of the party-list system. In the last election, only nine party-list groups garnered support above the 2% threshold.

The Supreme Court changed that by ruling that all of the allocated seats for the party list had to be filled. This is from the SC’s decision:

“The percentage of votes garnered by each party-list candidate is arrived at by dividing the number of votes garnered by each party by 15,950,900, the total number of votes cast for party-list candidates [in the 2007 elections].

“There are two steps in the second round of seat allocation. First, the percentage is multiplied by the remaining available seats, 38, which is the difference between the 55 maximum seats reserved under the Party-List System and the 17 guaranteed seats of the two-percenters.

“The whole integer of the product of the percentage and of the remaining available seats corresponds to a party’s share in the remaining available seats. Second, we assign one party-list seat to each of the parties next in rank until all available seats are completely distributed. We distributed all of the remaining 38 seats in the second round of seat allocation. Finally, we apply the three-seat cap to determine the number of seats each qualified party-list candidate is entitled.”

What we have is an easy system for getting elected into congress with all of the benefits that congressmen have — even a pork barrel allocation even as the party-list congressmen have no district on which to spend the funds to build roads, bridges, hospitals which is the main reason why congressmen are allocated their funds.

Perhaps, if the party-lists are not allowed pork barrel allocations, the regular congressmen and many of the present party-listers would not be so interested in running as party-listers.

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hvp 03.01.10)

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