By NESTOR MATA
THE vaunted “daang matuwid” (straight path) advocacy of President Noynoy Aquino has failed. While the practice of some government officials and workers to solicit bribes is not new, its continued prevalence shows that corruption under the Aquino administration continues.
These are the findings of a survey commissioned by the Office of the Ombudsman showing that while there may be fewer people offering bribes, there are more government officials and employees demanding such an inducement.
Ever since Aquino took over the presidency in 2010, bribery was initiated by the giver (3 out of 4 families), according to the survey. Three years later the trend shifted, with more government officials and employees demanding bribes (7 out of 10).
What can be done to fight the problem of bribery? The answer, in the words of political analyst Ramon Casiple, is “Crackdown from the top.” He said that Aquino’s “tuwid na daan” policy “failed in both perception and [actuality] because instead of discouraging those in the government from asking and taking bribes, they seem to have become more daring.” And he emphasized that “Matuwid na daan failed to impact on government bureaucracy.
There is lack of political will from the top!”
The Ombudsman’s survey that showed the majority of those who were asked for bribes were families seeking justice or securing registry documents and licenses, means “that people in government are not convinced that there is sincerity and political will behind the anti-corruption drive of the administration,” Casiple said. And the government’s commitment to curb corruption should lead to fewer incidents of bribery, but such reduction is not happening.
Casiple said the Aquino administration needs to go after corrupt government officials, and prosecute and put them in jail. He pointed out that the jailing of Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. did not display “political will but more of politics, because other government officials implicated in the pork barrel scam were not charged.”
Acting Senate Minority Leader Vicente Sotto 3rd said the Ombudsman’s survey gave the government a “black eye.” And in the House of Representatives, several party-list congressmen said bribery thrives in an environment where people can get away with it.
This critique of the Aquino government, as voiced by independent political observers and leaders from the opposition, appear to belie the perception in a Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) report released by the World Bank Group about “notable improvement in the areas of political stability and control of corruption” under President Aquino from 2010 to 2013.
While all of those in the Senate and the Lower House appear to be aware of the rampant corruption in the Aquino government, we note, sadly, that not one of them came forward with a solution on how to stop this horrible plague, except for the perceptive analyst Casiple who emphatically stressed that the “crackdown must come from the top.”
More than this, concerned citizens in the country have been castigating President Aquino for what they called his “tyrannical and unconstitutional” actions ever since he came to power in 2010. In citizen assemblies in Lipa City, Cebu City, and Angeles City, a massive outpouring of calls were heard for Aquino to step down from office so that genuine reforms in government as advocated by the National transformation Council (NTC) can be carried out. The move is for a “transition government” under retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno.
One of the speakers at the NTC assembly in Angeles City last Wednesday, former Senator Francisco S. Tatad, called the Aquino government the “most corrupt” in history. He cited the controversies hounding the Aquino government such as the Priority Development Fund (PDAF) and Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) scams, which could reach P1-trillion in terms of abused public funds. No less than the Supreme Court has declared the PDAF and DAP as unconstitutional.
Like other speakers at the citizens assembly, Tatad called for Aquino to step down because his government is no longer functioning as shown by reports of persistent corruption and the rising crime wave index.
They called for “all necessary and available lawful means” to compel President Aquino to step down at the soonest possible time and to “immediately organize an alternative government consisting of men and women of integrity and proven worth.”
In short, what all concerned Filipinos want is a return to true democracy!
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The flaws and glitches of the Precinct Count Optical Scanner voting machines, better known as the notorious “Hocus-PCOS”, which were used during the flawed 2010 presidential and 2013 mid-term elections, have been exposed once again.
What we Filipinos experienced are the very same flaws of electronic voting in other countries of the world, including the United States and European nations, which have now abandoned it and returned to the old fashioned voting and manual counting because electronic systems threatened the integrity of the electoral process.
Australia is the latest of those countries that rejected electronic voting, like those of the Smartmatic AES with PCOS machines used in the Philippines, or even using the Internet. The Australian Parliament’s Joint (House of Representatives and Senate) Standing Committee on Electoral Matters ruled out the proposed move from manual voting and counting to electronic.
Shifting to electronic voting for elections, the committee said, was not feasible before the next election or in the near future without “catastrophically compromising electoral integrity.” The committee found machine electronic voting “vulnerable to hacking and measures to mitigate that risk would be costly.
In its report, the committee showed that majority of countries continued to rely on paper-based voting and some that had invested in electronic voting have abandoned it. It showed that the United States, which had adopted electronic voting of various kinds some years ago, about 70 percent voters in the recent mid-term elections cast paper ballots that were counted manually as before. Ireland and The Netherlands, which spent so much in trying out electronic voting, have also abandoned it because of the risks and actual flaws of electronic voting. Even the United Kingdom sticks to the old fashioned voting and manual counting because electronic systems threaten the integrity of the electronic process.
Here in the Philippines, strangely, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) insists on the use, again, of those “Hocus PCOS” voting machines, with their flaws and glitches as Filipino voters had experienced in the 2010 and 2013 polls, in the coming 2016 presidential elections.
Why, oh, why can’t Comelec abandon electronic voting and return to manual voting, just like those advanced countries in the world?
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Quote of the Day: “Where old fashion manual elections end, there the horror of electronic voting begins!” – Anon.
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