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The struggle to fight corruption
By:Dr. Bernardo M. Villegas12:55 am | Tuesday, December 6th,
2011
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I share the following judgment rendered by Mr. Ramon del Rosario
Jr., chair of the Makati Business Club,
on the campaign of the present government to fight corruption in
and outside government: The Aquinoadministration has just completed
its first year in office and if we are to compare our situation
today to
where we were a year ago in our campaign for clean and honest
governance, we are in a significantly
better position if only for the fact that we now have a
President who manifests not only personal integrity
but is also sincerely determined to weed out the culture of
corruption in government. President Aquino
has also appointed credible and competent people to key posts
who have so far demonstrated their
commitment of implementing the strategic reforms and good
governance policies keenly advocated by
the President.
This quote is from a speech delivered by Mr. Del Rosario at the
3rd general membership meeting of the
Management Association of the Philippines in Cebu. Among the
structural reforms cited by Mr. Del
Rosario is the culture of accountability that has resulted from
the passing of the landmark GOCC
Governance Act of 2011, which can significantly help in putting
a stop to the anomalous arrangements
that allowed officers of government-owned and -controlled
corporations to milk these corporations fortheir benefit and at the
expense of the government.
More than a decade ago, studies of the World Bank and the Asian
Development Bank already estimated
losses due to private and public sector corruption to amount to
a yearly sum of P400 billion. One half of
this amount is the loss to government resulting from tax-evasion
practices of individuals and corporations
with or without the connivance of corrupt officials of the
Bureau of Internal Revenue. The other half is due
to the misappropriation of public funds, especially in the
Department of Public Works and Highways,
Department of Education, Department of Public Health and
Department of Agriculture. From recent well-
publicized exposes, we can also include the Armed Forces.
Examples of these corrupt practices are
roads that are not constructed or are poorly constructed, with
the misappropriated funds going to the
pockets of corrupt public officials and their cohorts; and money
meant for textbooks and other teaching
materials being diverted to the private accounts of education
officials; the fertilizer scam in the previous
administration. Given inflation over the years, I would suspect
that unless arrested by a decisive leader,the annual amount would
now exceed P400 billion, more than enough to balance the budget and
to build,
among others, thousands of kilometers of farm-to-market roads
and thousands of classrooms.
I share the optimism of Mr. Del Rosario that we can stop the
bleeding in the most critical sectors of the
government. For example, Secretary Rogelio Singson of the DPWH
is both honest and competent. He
has done much to root out the corruption in his department by
going after the more notorious regional
directors. The same can be said about the current secretary of
Education, Brother Armin Luistro, ably
aided by his chief finance officer, Francis Varela. In fact, to
even bolster the anti-corruption campaign in
the two departments, there is the innovative partnership that
the two departments have struck to build
classrooms for the public school system. The expertise of the
engineers of DPWH can be utilized to
guarantee the most cost-effective manner of constructing school
buildings. These are just some
illustrations of a consensus among many business people that the
members of the cabinet of President
Aquino are already fostering a culture of integrity, even if
there is no sign that we can soon punish thosewho were guilty of
corruption in the past. At least leakages have been plugged.
The President, however, cannot let his guard down. He has to
learn lessons from our biggest Asean
neighbor, Indonesia. As an editorial in The Wall Street
Journal(August 26-28, 2011) stated, President
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) is suffering a setback in his
campaign against corruption. Widely
praised for early wins during his first term (2004-2009) in his
anti-corruption campaign, President SBY is
now being criticized for not persevering enough in his efforts
to root out corruption. In his first years, with
the able help of his finance minister Mulyani Indrawati, he was
able to send to jail a good number of
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corrupt officials in both the private and public sectors,
including the father of his daughter-in-law. In his
second term, however, he failed to support Minister Mulyani in
an internal power struggle, causing her to
resign and to accept the position of managing director at the
World Bank. President SBY still seems to be
unduly influenced by powerful business people. Worse still, the
former treasurer of the Presidents own
Democratic Party was recently arrested for alleged graft related
to the construction of facilities for the
Southeast Asian Games in 2010. Although many still look up to
President SBY as an honest person, he
is criticized for not having the political will to discipline
some of the people around him. This could verywell happen to
President Aquino who may not be coddling crony capitalists but is
surrounding himself
with classmates, shooting mates and other assorted buddies.
Another country that offers lessons on fighting corruption is
India, which has been in the limelight because
of an activist by the name of Anna Hazare, who has used fasting
as a way to pressure the government to
act more decisively in combatting corruption after some
high-profile telecom scandals worth billions of
dollars were recently unearthed. Ms. Hazare is advocating for
legislation to set up an all-powerful
ombudsman that combats corruption at every level. It is
interesting to read a critique of the figure of the
ombudsman as the wrong answer to the problem. In a commentary on
Indian corruption, Ms. Shruti
Rajagopalan, a doctoral student in economics at George Mason
University, maintains that monitoring
corruption is a less effective way than removing the numerous
restrictions on business imposed by the
Indian government that has not yet rid itself of the socialist
tendencies of the past. In her words:
Restricting business freedom through extensive government
regulation is probably the greatest source of
graft. Licenses, permits and quotas create artificial rents and
self-interested bureaucrats and politicians
attempt to extract these rents while entrepreneurs lobby for
them. Compliance requirements and
inspections worsen the problem. These observations should
motivate President Aquino to support the
move in both houses of Congress to amend the economic provisions
of the Constitution that unduly
restrict the entry of foreign direct investments into the
Philippines. These restrictions give way to all sorts
of rent seeking and influence peddling. Just remember the
notorious ZTE affair in the last administration.
Monitoring is most useful when it is applied to the necessary
functions of government agencies such as
purchasing equipment and materials. This is where a close
cooperation between the government and civil
society can produce very positive results. A leading example is
that cited by Mr. Del Rosario in his MAP
address: The Makati Business Club has been involved in
monitoring government procurement processes
and helping ensure the proper delivery of public services
through the Coalition against Corruption, which
MBC helped convene in 2004. Of course, one of our partners in
the coalition is the Management
Association of the Philippines, plus the Ateneo School of
Government, the Bishops-Businessmens
Conference, CBCP-Laiko, CBCP-NASSA, CODE-NGO, Dilaab Foundation,
Integrated Bar of the
Philippines, Namfrel, and the Transparency and Accountability
Network. We believe that procurement
monitoring is an effective way of addressing public-sector
corruption because it prevents the misuse of
public funds, checks officials abuse of authority in procurement
transactions, helps improve institutional
accountability, promotes competitive bidding, and empowers
citizens to participate in governance.
Needless to say, structural reforms and monitoring systems can
go only so far in eradicating corruption.
An honest society requires a critical mass of individuals who
have the appropriate values and virtues in
everything that they do. These individuals must consider virtue
as its own reward. We can have these
virtuous individuals in sufficient numbers to establish a
culture of integrity in our entire society only if the
basic units of societythe family, the schools and faith-based
organizationsdo their respective jobs of
nurturing the necessary social virtues of honesty, justice and
charity among the citizens. Considering the
Christian belief in original sin with which our human nature is
tainted, the struggle to fight corruption will
be a never-ending effort.
For comments, my email address [email protected]
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