Editorial
Worsening corruption
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:24:00 06/30/2008
A World Bank study released last week said that corruption in the Philippines is perceived to be the worst among East Asia’s leading economies. The Philippines is now at the bottom of the list of East Asia’s 10 largest economies when it comes to control of corruption, edged out by Indonesia, which scored the worst in the region in the 2007 survey.
The Philippines’ percentile rank for corruption fell to 22 percent from 23 percent last year. Percentile rank indicates the percentage of the 212 countries studied by the World Bank that rate below the rank of a specific country. Higher values indicate better governance ratings. Thus, the Philippines ranks higher than only 22 percent of the countries studied.
The ranking of the Philippines on control of corruption has worsened over the past 11 years, from 45.1 percent in 1996 to 22.0 percent in 2007. It has gone down during the incumbency of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, from 36.9 percent in 2000 to 22.0 percent last year.
Other studies and surveys have shown basically the same trend: the slackening of control over corruption. For instance, the 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) released by Transparency International, a global corruption watchdog, gave a score of 2.5 to the Philippines, on a scale of 10, with 10 as the cleanest. The Philippines ranked 117th among 159 countries included in the index, and its rating indicated that it had a “severe’’ corruption problem.
In September 2006, a World Bank Report on Worldwide Governance Indicators showed a sharp decline in the Philippines’ ranking in the control of corruption, from 50.5 percent in 1998 to 37.4 percent in 2005.
The 2006 World Competitiveness Survey by the Switzerland-based Institute for Management Development ranked the Philippines 60th on bribery and corruption among 61 countries surveyed. In the 2007 report of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, using a grading system with 10 as the worst possible score, the Philippines got 9.4, worsening sharply from its grade of 7.8 in 2006.
The problem of corruption in the Philippines is getting worse, and it appears that it is not just a problem of perception but an actuality. The corruption cases are increasing not only in number but in the amount of money involved. In the past, the big cases involved tens of millions of pesos; now, the figures run into hundreds of millions and even billions.
The major cases are familiar to people who have been following the news avidly: the $2-million IMPSA bribery case allegedly involving former justice secretary Hernando Perez, the allegedly overpriced P1.2-billion Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard, the Commission on Elections’ P1.3-billion poll computerization program, the P728-million fertilizer scam and the $329-million national broadband network deal with ZTE Corp. Except for the IMPSA case, charges have not been filed in these cases. There are scores of other “minor’’ cases that have not been given much publicity.
In 1997, the Office of the Ombudsman estimated that the government lost $48 billion (about P2.4 trillion at the exchange rate then prevailing) to corruption in the previous 20 years. Think of what the government could have done with all the money that was lost to corruption. The P2.4 trillion could have financed the construction of hundreds of hospitals, thousands of school buildings, tens of thousands of kilometers of roads and bridges, and scores of seaports and airports. It could have funded, among other things, a new Masagana 99 program that would have increased the country’s rice production.
Corruption has debilitated the nation and has deprived it of financial resources with which it could have developed its untapped natural and manpower potential. It has worsened the problem of poverty.
Recently, the people witnessed what havoc natural disasters could wreak upon the country. Corruption is a continuing manmade disaster that is weakening and destroying the nation. David Nussbaum, Transparency International’s chief executive, said, “Corruption isn’t just a natural disaster: It is the cold, calculated theft of opportunity from the men, women and children who are least able to protect themselves.”
If corruption has worsened, it is because the people have been apathetic. They feel they can do nothing about it. But they can. They can monitor and denounce big projects that are tainted with graft. They can pressure government officials to be transparent and upright. And they can, like the Argentines several years ago, humiliate public officials who are robbing them of their tax money.
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