Why is the Philippines corrupt? this is answered by this equation Corruption = Rich opportunity or Economic rent + Discretion – Accountability which is Zero C stands for corruption (another meaning is “stealing the tax money of the Filipino people”), R for economic rent (another meaning is “what is in it for my pocket to make me rich?”, D for discretionary powers (another meaning is “power of politician to do whatever they want”), A for accountability (another meaning is “admitting responsibility of what they did wrong and accept to be punish justly by the law and by the Filipino people”). The more opportunities for economic rent (R) exist in the Philippines, the larger will be the corruption. And, the greater the discretionary (or given to make whatever decisions they want) powers (D) granted to elected “Public Servants”, the greater will be the corruption. However, the more elected “Public Servants” are held accountable (A) for their stealing of tax money of Filipinos, the less will be the corruption, and hence a minus sign in front of A. Fertile grounds for a corrupt system are permitted by Filipino sto exist: 1. Philippine Constitution contains: laws such as the 60/40 ownership, rules, regulations, and administrative orders to restrict business and economic activities and thereby creates huge opportunities for generating economic rent, and especially if these restrictive measures are complex and opaque and applied in a selective, secretive, inconsistent and non-transparent way; 2. President, Congressmen, Senators, Governors are granted large discretionary powers with respect to interpreting rules, are given a lot of freedom to decide on how rules are to be applied, to whom and in what manner they are to be applied, are vested with powers to amend, alter, and rescind the rules, and even to supplement the rules by invoking new restrictive administrative measures and procedures. 3. There are no effective mechanisms or systems and institutional arrangements in the Philippines to hold these elected “Public Servants” accountable for their actions. They pick the Judges in the Court Systems, then they buy them with bribes. Why can they buy them? It’s because these “public servants” intentionally left out the “Jury System” which in a Representative Democracy “Presidential” make the decision to judge them guilty or not, and not the lone or single Judge they can buy or bribe. Levels of Corruption Let’s understand at least two levels of corruptions: high level and low level corruptions which feed each other. 1. High Level Corruption refers to stealing tax money of Filipinos at the top and by leading politicians (President, Senators, Congressmen, Judges, Governors, Mayors, others) such as the PDAF (money to be used for hard projects like public works, roads, water & drainage, flood control systems, etc; soft projects like scholarships, medical expenses for the poor Filipinos), DAF expose scams. They will do anything to remain in office, for example, so they steal “Pork Barrel” to buy votes and bribe Judges to avoid being punished by the law or the Constitution. . 2. Low Level Corruption – such as the underhand or under the table payment to a clerk to expedite the issue of a driving license, business license, police clearance, NBI clearance, Medical clearance or certificate, etc. In the low level corruption the civil servants with very low salaries to meet the living expenses of their families are driven by necessity to engage in corrupt practices. Why is it that their salaries are kept low? It is because the money is being stolen by high level corruption. The Barangay captain and council members are all part of the problem of corruption. The large, medium, and small business owners get visited by corrupt BIR tax collectors, and other influence peddlers with envelopes for payments. These bribe payments lowers their profits so these businesses then pass the cost of the bribes on to the consumers – the poor Filipino people to recover the bribe payments. Pikes Canencia of Mandaue city comments :Accountability and responsibility always go together as two faces of a coin. This particular area, is quite sadly where we Filipinos are impoverished. This problem touches deeply, no only on our civility, but most especially our morality; and therefore speaks about the quality and legitimacy of our predominant moral pillars and institutions. But look at how these supposedly responsible entities are doing. Instead of facing squarely the problem, they are virtually washing their hands, by either being silent, or by diversion to sanitizing and cosmetics defensive moves. Some even pass the blame to the poor, uneducated masses, exempting the leaders. And since the leaders are held as saints and their role sacrosanct, even the bulk of the so-called intelligentsia, closed their eyes, or play mum about it. Yes, as in many Latin-named poor and corrupt countries, the prophetic model of the blind leading the blind of the Bible, is very subtly gaining fulfillment. This a state that calls for courageous actions, that may entail either drastically changing the ships direction, or abandoning and or scuttling the ship. And yet, even somewhat fettered, as being followers only, our very own individual fate is at stake, and therefore our very own actions are very much part of it. It is a tough decision, but I think, having our own responsibility, and accountability for ourselves, the decision, cannot just be passed to anyone but us -- INDIVIDUALLY! Art Santiago comments So true Pikes! At the end of the day, even if evil be so prevalent it remains ones sole decision to shun it. Truth is, the only logical reason why our LORD allows evil to exist to this very moment is to give each and every individual the opportunity to show if he or she will choose to live an upright life or not. Cesar Umali of God Save the World, Inc. comments , we in God Save the World, Inc. have campaigned, demonstrated, rallied around the Philippines even formed the group Campaign against Corruption here in Muntinlupa for many years, even during Marcos time, but our cry fell into deaf ears, until Pinoy used our rallying cry as his slogan in his campaign for the presidency, but his tuwid na daan became baluktot and did not attain his objectives, now we have this dap, PDAP, SCAM, but as you said there is no solution in sight to the problem of corruption. Those guilty are not accepting their guilt and confess their sins to the people. In 1998-1999 yours truly was given a masteral degree at the National Defense College of the Philipines NDCP of the Armed forces of the Philippines and given a commission of Commander, with a policy options paper on Countrywide Development, at that time Pork barrel was called Countrywide development fund then changed into many names,I called for the abolition of pork barrel because of the corruption and evil associated with it, the fund does not really go to concrete development of the countryside to which it should have gone to to prevent people from the countryside to immigrate to the cities and become squatters, now squatters have proliferated in the cities creating monstrous problems of crime, chaos, disorder and overcrowdeded and lack of peace and order. The only solution is through the gospel of Jesus Christ that is why we formed God Save the World, Inc. with a lateral group of God save the Philippines movement, in truth, the church has gone to apostasy-- with even many pastors going to politics thinking that this is the way to solve the problem, right now there are only 1 million bible believing Christcentered, Spiritfilled Christians apprximately based on a recent survey, out of the population of 100 million people, this is the tragedy in the Philippines. God Save the World, Inc.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 02:42:35 +0000
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