Sharing ideas to combat corruption

Corruption in government is once again a hot topic, not only on social media, but also whenever and wherever people start to huddle and strike up a conversation.

The hottest nowadays is, of course, everything that has to do with the country’s tourism department, from the way it has been managed, to the regulation of the Philippine tourism industry, as well as the promotion of the Philippines as a tourist destination.

It seems that corruption has become so pervasive that newly appointed Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat was reported to have shed tears (of anguish?) during an interview when she had to talk about the extent of corruption that happened in the department, including that of its agencies.

The latest controversies involving the past (and resigned) tourism secretary Wanda Teo and her brothers Ramon and Erwin Tulfo had everyone appalled at the rumors of tens of millions of pesos exchanging hands for projects that were deemed questionable and poorly designed.

Even the closure of Boracay came with stories of irregularities, the most recent being the ongoing earth-moving activities in the midst of the ban on any construction in the famous island.

The President is once again on a rampage, announcing the forthcoming dismissal of several government officials who have been judged to be corrupt, this act being a further strong warning to people in the bureaucracy who may be involved or tempted to indulge in unethical transactions.

Worsening state

But will this really be enough to stem corruption in government, one that is now deemed to be getting worse?

No less than data from Transparency International (TI), a body that measures the corruption perception of more than 160 countries in the world, would attest to this steady decline.

In TI’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI) published since 2012, the Philippines showed a continuing drop, from a high of 38 in 2014 to an alarming 34 last year, far below the average global score of 43 and the average Asia Pacific grade of 44, and nearing the average score of 32 of the worst performing region, the Sub-Saharan Africa.

(The CPI, culled from surveys and assessments of corruption by institutions like the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, uses a scale where zero is considered highly corrupt and 100 as very clean.)

In terms of country ranking (the top being the “cleanest”), the Philippines also continued to demonstrate this slip: it was already 95th of 168 countries in 2015, but slipped to 101st out of 176 in 2016, and further ranked lower to 111th of 180 countries in 2017.

If nothing significant is done, we may expect the 2018 report to reflect an even worse score. Already, there are rampant stories of key government officials who are shamelessly “accumulating” their respective campaign funds for the 2019 elections.

Preventing corruption

As experts in the study of corruption note, and as commonsense tells us, the fight against corruption should go beyond words – or for that matter, the mere dismissal by the President of government employees and officials found to have committed irregularities against the state.

Countries that have been successful in their war against corruption embrace long-term strategies supported by meaningful laws and effective agencies that can prevent corruption from happening, and not just ferreting out and punishing those that have already become embroiled in corrupt acts.

It is not also enough to set up courts that will simply review cases of corruption and order the dismissal from public service of those found guilty. Corruption courts should come up with stiffer penalties, including the seizure of ill-acquired assets.

Is it an Asian thing where a president who has been tried of plunder and ousted from his position, the highest in the land, can make a comeback in public service as if nothing had happened barely two decades ago?

Lastly, experts point out the need for an environment where civil society personalities and media practitioners can freely go after and report stories of corruption, not just among members of government, but even in the private sector.

Filipinos still give the current president a high popularity and acceptance rating, and although this has dwindled – even if only slightly – over the last two years, it doesn’t mean that everything’s all right in government.

Commitment to correct wrongdoings

Unfortunately, Filipinos love to bellyache, but are least motivated to act on their complaints – except perhaps when things become unbearably a matter of life and death, or its equivalent.

We’ve seen the many scandalous incidents of big-scale corruption during the previous administrations, and while citizen movements may have sprouted, these were not sustained long enough to contribute significantly to correcting the wrong that had been committed.

Transparency as tool against corruption

Transparency, one colleague said, is a potent tool against corruption. He suggested a government database posted online of all government employees, now numbering from 1.5 million to  two million, structured something akin to a family tree. The Civil Service Commission can be the administrator of such a project.

If we even want to correct the prevailing practice of contractualizing jobs in government, casual employees should also be included in the online database that is open to perusal by any citizen of the country, especially those who pay taxes.

Sharing ideas

We should come up with more ideas like this that can really matter in the fight against corruption. What initiatives can you share?

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Should you wish to share any insights, write me at Link Edge, 25th Floor, 139 Corporate Center, Valero Street, Salcedo Village, 1227 Makati City. Or e-mail me at [email protected]. For a compilation of previous articles, visit www.BizlinksPhilippines.net.