Philippine President Aquino III yesterday rallied lawmakers from 80
countries attending a global conference against corruption to step up efforts
to eliminate this modern - day evil.
“The message of our times is
clear,” Aquino told the 5th conference of the Global Organisation of
Parliamentarians Against Corruption (Gopac). “The gap between rich and poor,
between the powerful and the powerless, has become too huge. Too many people
are being left behind. And it has also become clear inequity is borne of
corruption.”
He said the greatest challenge
for any modern society “is how to stem the corruption that has feasted on the
very moral fabric of our society and institutions.”
Sen. Edgardo Angara, newly
elected chairman of Gopac, said corruption was not limited to the government—it
also occurred with regularity in the business sector, thus requiring much
vigilance from parties interested in eradicating it.
Some 500 delegates, including 12
heads of parliaments, from 80 countries are attending the four-day conference
on the theme “Good Leaders, Good Laws, Good Citizens”. The meeting is being
held at the Philippine International Convention centre in Pasay City.
Gopac is the only international
network dedicated to promoting good governance and combating corruption around
the world.
Culture of accountability
In his keynote speech, Aquino—who
is banking on an anticorruption campaign to help turn the country around—said
elected leaders the world over were “forming a more cohesive force against
corruption”.
“The more we share our ideas, the
more we listen to one another—the sooner we will achieve our goal of
eliminating corruption,” Aquino said.
He said eliminating corruption
must be a priority of government to prevent corrupt officials from being
elected to high positions of authority.
“We know that corruption cannot
be eliminated by sending a few erring officials to gaol, or by exposing a
single faulty contract, or by removing from office a single oppressive tyrant,”
he said.
Obviously referring to former
president and now Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Aquino said: “The Filipino
people have no doubt taken huge strides towards establishing a culture of
fairness and accountability when no less than a former president was charged
with plunder, among other things.”
He also noted that Chief Justice
Renato Corona was impeached and stripped of his position after he was found to
have lied about more than 98 per cent of his cash assets.
Philippines an example
“But while these cases have an
undeniable impact in our cultural milieu, without structural reform, another
corrupt president might one day take over the reins of power, another Chief
Justice might one day again betray the public trust,” Aquino warned.
He said the problem of corruption
must be approached “with the long-term in mind—reforms cannot be mere blips in
the radar”.
“As parliamentarians, this is
your task, and perhaps you will be interested in the policies that have gotten
us to where we are now, and which can also form the basis of change in your
respective home countries,” Aquino said.
He said the “overarching idea”
behind his anticorruption efforts was simple: “Go back to the basics of public
service. In short, to do the right thing.”
He cited the success of the
public works department in lowering the cost of the Quezon-Araneta Avenues
underpass in Quezon City from 694 million pesos (US$17 million) to 30 million
pesos ($737,200).
He also said the justice and
social welfare departments, the Metro Manila Development Authority and the
Technical Educational Skills Development Authority had established internal
mechanisms to police themselves and respond to administrative complaints.
The budget department has also
been taking care of taxpayers’ money by using the zero-base budgeting system—“a
system that makes certain that we get more bang for our buck, rather than
rehashing and funding the same old projects.”
‘Sick man of Asia’ no more
Speaking ahead of the pesident,
Angara said the Philippines had previously been tagged the “sick man of Asia”
but “things have been turning around”.
“We must be doing something
right,” Angara said in an ambush interview.
He said that previously,
corruption was not talked about openly. “But people realised the cost it
inflicts on people, infrastructures, schools and hospitals. Now, when they want
a better life, they want a better government.”
Angara, whose term will end this
June, backed Aquino’s call for structural reforms via legislation.
“The opportunities for graft and
corruption in government are always there because funds are present due to
annual appropriations in the budget,” Angara told reporters.
“But corruption in business is
more subtle and sophisticated … Note the global phenomenon where people in
banking and the financial sector profited immediately just from the rigging of
interest rates.”
Angara said “financial chicanery”
occurred through the following examples:
A would-be homeowner would need
“around 33 signatures from the barangay chair to the mayor to the executives”
of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council before construction
of his house can begin.
Politicians receive campaign
contributions from unscrupulous businessmen to whom they become beholden.
Businessmen would overprice
products or services and offer commissions to cooperative bidding officers.
A long, long time
Senate President Juan Ponce
Enrile, who also delivered welcome remarks, warned that any President would not
be able to stamp out corruption within a six-year term as it would “take a
long, long time” to do so.
Enrile told reporters that
Aquino’s “good intentions in reducing, if not eradicating, corruption” were
evident in his tenacity to convict Corona in an impeachment trial. But
eradicating corruption could not rest solely on the president, he said.
“It depends upon many layers of
government bureaucracy and apart from that, you go to the court where the
tedious process of presentation of evidence, argumentation and
counterargumentation, manoeuvres and countermanoeuvres will cost time and
delay,” he said.
“I said six years is very short …
not only in the Philippines but anywhere,” he added.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr.
called attention to efforts to prevent further cases of corruption.
“We cannot rely solely on
anticorruption laws and we should aim for prevention by undertaking changes in
government structures and processes,” he said.
Belmonte noted that Transparency
International showed the country “significantly moving up” from 129th to 105th
in anticorruption ranking “but remains at high risk for corruption.”
Cathy C. Yamsuan and Michael Lim
Ubac
Philippine Daily Inquirer
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