Living up to the promise

THE FILIPINO people’s election of President  Benigno Simeon Aquino III is finally starting to pay dividends in the fight against corruption. It appears that the  game plan of the P-Noy administration in this fight was to first get rid of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez and her cohorts, who appeared to be protecting rather than going after  big corrupt government officials. The Office of the Ombudsman under her term had a credibility of near zero in the fight against corruption and any moves to go after top government officials who committed corruption during the GMA administration would not have gone far. The bribery case against former Justice Secretary Hernando Perez and the plunder case against former AFP comptroller Carlos Garcia  easily come to mind. It was thus imperative, if the current fight against corruption were to succeed, to first get her and her followers out and clean up the Office of the Ombudsman.

With Gutierrez gone, the fight can now go all-out. The recent revelations of high-level corruption in the military, PCSO, Pagcor, LWUA, Department of Agriculture, Comelec and Maguindanao is a good start and should be pursued with pit-bull determination. For the fight against corruption to succeed, the message should be crystal-clear that this current government will not leave any stone unturned when going after the corrupt, particularly the big fish, and make sure that they are vigorously prosecuted with utmost expediency and speed. Should these people be eventually convicted and jailed, their ill-gotten properties should be garnished and turned over to the government. And this process should not take five or more years but just three to six months. And if there is a need to put some of the accused under the Witness Protection Program to ferret out the truth and avoid a protracted litigation and expedite the conviction and jailing of  corrupt top government officials, then so be it. The earlier the country puts these corrupt officials—who have betrayed the Filipino people and robbed us of our future and dignity—in jail the sooner and clearer will the message come across that corruption does not pay. The high returns of corruption should be matched with the risks of getting caught, prosecuted and jailed with the fruits of corruption reverted to the government.

The filing of tax evasion cases by the Bureau of Internal Revenue in connection with the unexplained and unreported ill-gotten income and wealth of these corrupt politicians and government officials is an effective tool in the continuing fight against corruption.

No fight against corruption will succeed unless the culture of impunity with regard to corruption in the very high levels of government is changed. It will take some time before this prevailing culture of corruption is reversed because many of the corrupt still occupy positions of influence in government and society and corruption has become the norm rather than the exception. Also, the current justice system favors the perpetrators rather than the victims. The fight against corruption will never be won if we stop at the revelation stage, where we seem to get bogged down and act as if that’s as far as we can go and then wait 10 to 20 years before a final decision, from the Supreme Court level, is handed down. The Constitution and the Rules of Court actually mandate the speedy resolution of cases, but the judiciary has not been effectively implementing these provisions. This needs to be fixed and President Noynoy should have a team look into this.

That some Catholic bishops unduly received monetary benefits which were used to buy a Mitsubishi Montero and other vehicles during the GMA administration did not come as a surprise. We have had these suspicions even before, particularly during critical events in the GMA administration when the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines as a body could not get unanimity in its pronouncements, with some bishops even openly supporting GMA notwithstanding the glaring evidence that crimes had been committed, such as the “Hello, Garci” and the NBN-ZTE scandals. To many, the bishops asking and receiving funds from the GMA administration were  bad enough but worse is the thought that some of them may have used this “generosity” of GMA to distort their views of right and wrong and turned their backs on the Filipino people and their Catholic flock.

The Aquino administration should review closely the DOJ decision absolving former Palawan Gov. Joel Reyes et al. of the murder of radio broadcaster Dr. Gerry Ortega in January 2011. The DOJ panel appears to have zeroed in on minor inconsistencies in the written testimony and admissions of those eventually charged and ignored the findings of the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine Nation Police on the existence of  text messages between the former governor and his former bodyguard just before, during and after the murder, which clearly implicate Reyes. The investigating panel should be investigated for this obviously flawed decision.

This case could be the litmus test of the current administration’s seriousness in fighting crimes committed with wanton impunity and perpetrated by influential politicians and stopping the murders of journalists and broadcasters who oppose corruption among local officials. This also puts to a test the integrity of our judicial system and the perception that for the right price, justice can be bought.

David L. Balangue is a former chairman and country managing partner of SyCip Gorres Velayo & Co., founder of  [email protected] and chairman of the Coalition Against Corruption. Comments may be sent to [email protected]