Citizens vs corruption

LAST WEEK the Department of Finance forged an agreement with business groups and civil society to encourage citizens’ participation in denouncing corrupt government officials, smugglers and tax cheats. For starters, the anti-corruption group is composed of six big business and civic organizations but we believe more will join it as the campaign goes on.

The formation of a citizens’ group to help in the campaign against corruption is an encouraging development. It can certainly help the Aquino administration, which is focused on an anti-corruption drive, attain its goal.

Cleansing the government of corruption will be like cleaning the Augean stables. The Philippines is considered one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index (October 2010) ranked the Philippines 134th among 178 countries surveyed.

In 2009 Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer asked 1,000 Filipinos to grade civil servants and the average score was 4 out of 5, with 5 being extremely corrupt. Seventy-seven percent said government actions to counter corruption were ineffectual, according to Samantha Grant, program coordinator for TI-Southeast Asia.

A huge amount of public money which could otherwise be used to fund public services and infrastructure goes to corruption. Renaud Meyer, United Nations Development Program country director, said the Philippines loses about P1.92 billion to corruption every year. Over a 20-year period, that’s close to half a trillion.

In 2000, the cost of corruption was 10 percent of the Gross National Product. A more recent estimate put it at close to 20 percent of the national budget. This is money that taxpayers have remitted to government and that is supposed to go back to them in the form of services and public works, but which is going into the pockets of corrupt government officials and employees.

“As a comparison, 16 percent goes to education and 4 percent goes to health. With this 20-percent figure in mind, let’s think how many schools, hospitals, barangay clinics could have been built, how many kilometers of roads could have been built,” Meyer said.

About a week ago, the Department of Education signed an integrity pact with business partners, suppliers and nongovernment organizations to do away with “old habits” and encourage strict adherence to good governance. We hope that other departments and offices of the government would conclude similar agreements with their business partners to ensure the strictest transparency in all their dealings.

Education Secretary Armin Luistro, who signed the agreement for the DepEd, said: “[W]e must acknowledge that corruption erodes the moral fiber and impedes economic growth [and] we must act responsibly by leading by example.” It would be well if the well-known “centers of corruption” in government, such as the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Customs and Department of Public Works and Highways, would follow the example and conclude similar integrity pacts.

But the campaign against corruption should be conducted not just by the government alone. More importantly, it should be conducted without letup by civil society groups and the average citizen.

The citizens’ campaign could start small, as suggested by the Public Transparency Reporting Project. It could be as simple as protesting and stopping the practice of politicians putting their names and faces on publicly funded projects and services.

Government officials and politicians who do this are essentially misappropriating public funds for their private gain (getting publicity for their reelection campaign at the next elections).

Another easily doable project would be to monitor the lifestyle of public officials and civil servants. Public Transparency Reporting Project (Pera Natin Ito!) is writing the relevant agencies and institutions to access the statements of assets and liabilities with net worth of government officials.

The people should also pressure President Aquino to certify as urgent the Whistleblowers’ Act and the Freedom of Information bill and ensure that Congress will pass these two measures in the current regular session. These two measures would greatly help in the campaign against corruption.

The term of the anti-corruption President Aquino is an auspicious time to campaign all-out against corruption. The task may seem daunting, but it can be done.