By MA. ANNA KRYNESSA L. RIVERA

It all starts innocently enough. Seemingly petty acts of dishonesty such as bringing home office supplies from work and doing small favors to speed up a friend’s transaction lay the groundwork for bigger and more malevolent cases of corruption. “There is petty corruption, and there is grand corruption. But it’s corruption just the same,” said Amado Mendoza, Jr., a political science professor in UP.

Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (CONTEND) Chairperson Danilo Arao, meanwhile, saw corruption as “a product of the problem of bureaucrat capitalism in the Philippines where government officials use their power and influence to further their economic ends.”

Indeed, corruption has become an endemic practice among government officials that has resulted in ballooning budget deficits and low public morale and trust in the government. To emphasize, Transparency International (TI), an independent body campaigning against corruption worldwide, recently ranked the Philippines as the third most corrupt country in Asia.

Exchange Gifts

Most blame the “appreciative” attitude of Filipinos for the origin and persistence of corruption in the country. The problem arises when both government employees and supposed customers begin to feel that “gifts” are conditions for delivering quality service. As private companies’ conditions for hiring are becoming more demanding than government offices’, people that Mendoza referred to as “less competent, less skilled” go to public service, making them prone to feeling indebted to “customers” who spoil them with gifts.

Mendoza noted that utang na loob or debt of gratitude can be perverted in the form of bribes or lagay, which serve as prerequisites to rendering services. Ed Laya*, a former Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) director, cited inconvenience as the primary reason for resorting to bribery. He claimed that applicants for a National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) clearance often pay fixers P500 to spare themselves the troublesome process that usually takes more than a day. He added that the case is similar in agencies such as the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the Land Transportation Office (LTO), the Bureau of Customs (BOC), and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR). The BIR and the BOC are included in the five agencies perceived as the most corrupt in a latest Social Weather Station survey.

Apparently, inefficiency in simple bureaucratic functions like processing work permits, applying for business licenses, and acquiring public certificates contribute to the prevalence of bribery in government agencies.

Business as Usual

Commissions and kickbacks are more complex forms of bribery. The only difference is that they appear to be legal and may be considered part of a formal transaction. Officials obtain commissions by awarding contracts through anomalous arrangements with private contractors. One of the most controversial examples involves the payoffs allegedly given to ousted President Joseph Estrada from jueteng operators as tokens of appreciation. Mendoza cited that, in contracts for road projects, for example, only as much as 40 percent of the allocated funds are spent on actual construction projects.

Ghost corruption, meanwhile, occurs when a public official overestimates the amount needed to fund public projects by adding fictitious supplies or personnel. Its appeal to would-be practitioners lies in its high-profit and low-risk factors. Under this scheme, bulk consumption of goods such as drugs, books, and office supplies are left unaccounted for because of the government’s inadequate mechanisms of monitoring the procurement of supplies for its offices.

According to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), in 1995, of the 49,308 tablet armchairs bought for P34 million by the Cagayan Valley regional office, 11,140 pieces never got delivered, 21,486 arrived unassembled, and 2,400 lacked writing pads, backrests, seats, and other parts. The National Police Commission, on the other hand, reported that there were at least 1,095 ghost officers in the Philippine National Police (PNP) under its payroll in 2003.

The profiteering of government officials through favorable treatment of certain interests, or crony capitalism, contributes largely to the loss of public money. As per this scheme, they either award anomalous contracts to relatives and friends or provide economic incentives or advantages such as exclusive markets and tax exemptions for businesses to which an official owes some kind of favor. Mendoza cited that, during Estrada’s term, the government had dropped Lucio Tan’s P26 billion tax evasion case. Tan had allegedly contributed about P5 billion to Estrada’s presidential campaign.

Little Weapons

What causes corruption in the Philippines is not so much the so-called appreciative nature of Filipinos, but the fallible government system that encourages corrupt tendencies. For instance, the financial restraints felt by ordinary government employees as minimum wage earners heighten the tendency to steal public money. Arao also said that rank-and-file employees are the ones caught often as they do not have the money to cover up their deeds. Currently, the Confederation for Unity, Recognition, and Advancement of Government Employees, an alliance of government employees’ unions, is campaigning to increase across the board government employees’ monthly salaries.

Arao related that “sometimes, even if their income may not be able to provide for an ostentatious lifestyle, they are forced to do so to maintain their class status.” He believes that increasing government employees’ salaries can help curb corruption at the lower echelons of power. Strengthening the Office of the Ombudsman, an independent government agency tasked with the prosecution of administrative cases of graft and corruption and with making all government transactions as transparent as possible, can discourage corruption by the top brass, said Arao.

In her State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo claimed that lifestyle checks have become its “lethal weapon” against corruption. Mendoza commented that “the concept itself is good.” He added, however, that the potency of these checks is rendered ineffective when corrupt officials themselves are in charge of their implementation, or when they serve as mere tools for the administration to pressure political opponents. Still, Arao recognized the government’s efforts but said that lifestyle checks simply fail to address the roots of corruption. “The big fish aren’t there and the process,” he said, “it’s quite arbitrary.” Laya, meanwhile, dismissed them as mere cosmetics of the Arroyo administration.

Arao sees the government’s attempts to deter corruption as useless. “If we don’t change the current social system, of course, it’s hopeless,” he said, emphasizing the need for a shift from what red tape-ridden workflows the present administration is pursuing to a radical transformation and removal of the elitist nature of leadership in the Philippines.

Despite possibly well-intentioned efforts to work within the levels of the Philippine bureaucracy, corruption styles have continued to evolve into smarter versions. The problem lies mainly in the deteriorated government system that has stood on feeble ground for many decades. The government itself has identified and tried to devise ways to rein in corrupt schemes thriving on various levels of governance, whose very structure inherently breeds corruption. The point, of course, should be to change it. ●

*Not his real name.

Published in print in the Collegian’s August 6, 2004 issue, with the headline “The Idiot’s Guide to Corruption: Classifying Itchy Hands in the Government.” The article has been edited for concision and contextual clarity.