Four-plus years after the President’s promise, corruption continues to ravage PH

This is in reaction to the letter of Col. Leonardo Odoño, “Drastic reforms needed to provide every Filipino a share of the national wealth” (12/4/20). We are as shocked at how far and wide corruption in this country has spread. It has become endemic, growing unabated despite the President’s promise of ending it in his first six months in office.

“Huwag na huwag talaga akong makarinig ng (Let me not hear anything about) corruption, (not) even a whiff or whisper. I will fire you or place you somewhere,” President Duterte said in his June 2016 speech. In that same speech, he minced no words about three government institutions being hotbeds of corruption: the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the Bureau of Customs (BOC), and the Philippine National Police.

But after more than four years of the Duterte administration, the “snake of corruption” has only grown, and continues to ravage the country.

We “see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice…,” as Ayn Rand wrote, in the appointments to the BOC of Isidro Lapeña and Nicanor Faeldon, whose tenures were marked by the entry of tons of shabu worth billions of pesos. They were subsequently “fired,” but their being remiss in their jobs were instead rewarded with appointments or placements elsewhere. On the other hand, government officials who have been actively doing their jobs like they should in times of calamities are being maligned and condemned, or seen as competing with the President.

We sympathize with Colonel Odoño in this regard. We should not allow this country to be ravaged by the incompetence, indifference, inaction, inutility, and immorality of the corrupt and traitorous people who rule this nation with Machiavellian might. Let us all not be stupefied by the brute power that is subjugating us, or be stymied by evil forces.

RAMON MAYUGA
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