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 hilippine
government officials live in big houses. That simple statement stands as a
testament to the corruptness and the lack of ethics that many people in
government currently exhibit. Be they Senators, Congressmen, governors,
mayors, judges, cabinet secretaries,
 or lowly
Department clerks. Hardly anything gets done in the Philippines without
"grease money," and, as many foreigners and locals alike have learned,
things come to a grinding halt once that "greasing" stops.
Doing business of any kind in the Philippines,
has thus become so confusing and esoteric that most foreign companies simply
bypass the country preferring to do business with other Asian countries instead.
However, if the Philippines is ever to regain its stature as a leader in
Southeast Asia, drastic measures need to be taken to reduce, if not eliminate
this cancer of graft and corruption that seems to have metastasized, to even the
most far-flung regions of the country.
On August of last year, the Arroyo
Administration, in a meeting of the Legislative Executive Development Advisory
Council, Sec. Rigoberto D. Tiglao,
President Arroyo's Chief-of-Staff noted Hong Kong's highly
successful program to stamp out
corruption in government. Based on the premise that
the easiest way
to prosecute the corrupt, is to use the lifestyle check. As explained by to
Sec. Tiglao,
"prosecuting
an instance of actual corruption is difficult because of the need to get the
briber and build up a case of a single incident. In contrast, the lifestyle
check approach simply involves proving that the wealth of a particular official
does not correspond to his Statement of Assets and Liabilities."
Thirty years ago Hong Kong
had the reputation of being one of the most corrupt
countries in
Asia. In fact
according to Tiglao, the word “tong” was derived from the HK Tong Gangs who
regularly extorted money from Hong Kong residents and businesses. Today however,
Transparency International ranks
Hong Kong
as the second
least corrupt country in Asia.
How did this transformation
come about?
The most important factor in the Hong Kong
transformation
was the
establishment in 1974 of the
Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). Adequately
funded and staffed, the ICAC went about doing lifestyle checks on public
servants and then turning over the results of those investigations that
warranted prosecution to their
Department of
Justice.
The Philippines should
follow Honk Kong's lead, as have
Australia and Korea who now
have ICAC-like commissions of their own.
But in order to be successful, we Filipinos should be resolute in this endeavor.
Deposed president Joseph Estrada, whose gaudy mansions and excessively lavish
lifestyle for himself and his mistresses were all well documented, still has to
be tried and sentenced.
While the Arroyo
Administration is indeed making strides in bringing to light corrupt public
officials via lifestyle checks, we need to see a flurry of convictions with the
guilty placed behind bars before we start seeing a decline in the overall level
of corruption in the country.
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