Corruption, Bureaucracy and the Philippines 2000

by Manuel L. Quezon III

"..We need to renew the social contract between government and citizens -to end the mutual indifference that has characterized their relationship these past 50 years. As President Ramos keeps saying -again and again- the Philippine State has historically required extraordinarily little of its citizens. And, as individuals, we Filipinos acknowledge few obligations to the national community." -Sec. Jose T. Almonte October 26, 1995

An old expat once grumbled to me (expats do a lot of grumbling) that the problem with the Philippines (expats love listing problems) isn't that our bureaucrats are corrupt; the problem is that there's no method to their corruption. "You see," he griped, "when a foreigner does business in another country, he immediately knows how much to set aside for bribes; everything has a fixed rate. In the Philippines, you never know who -or when- is suddenly going to pop up, demanding grease-money." After taking a gulp of Carlsberg (he detests San Miguel: "it gives me the runs"), he went on. "For example, in Africa, say I'm building a road. To get the contract, I know that x amount is for the minister of this, and y amount is for the general in the region. In those countries, once a road is approved, it's built -and built quickly and well, mind you! Not like this country, where even if you get the contract to build the road, it takes forever, because the contractor's busy trying to recoup his losses by being stingy with materials, since all sorts of unexpected bribes suddenly come up." An interesting point. I have never believed that we -us Filipinos- are more corrupt than our neighbors. They are just as corrupt as we are. They simply have gotten over our strictly small-time, greedily myopic version of corruption; furthermore they are far more clever than us in justifying -or dissimulating to evade the question of - their corruption. They never hesitate to make us, for example, feel inferior, and, since we have a chip on our soldier about our unbridled affection for our colonial masters, we never hesitate to oblige them by going into paroxysms of self-recrimination

whenever they criticize us. In the past I've said that our neighbors are a case of bagong yamans who take a perverse delight out of picking on our country because they used to envy us, and now -thanks to luck, or their own resourcefulness, or both - that they're awash with money, they can derive satisfaction from putting down us Filipinos who are comparable to down-at-the-heels aristocrats who squandered their birthright ! Case in point: Malaysia. Recently Prime Minister Mahathir went ballistic, screaming in outrage over a study that said the most corrupt countries were in his part of the world. "Let the sinless cast the first stone," he basically said, and pointed out that countries in his neck of the woods could learn a thing or two from the true masters of corruption, the First World. In particular, those countries that used to be colonial powers. After all, they were the ones who taught virtuous natives how to be corrupt in the first place. Opinion writers all over the region immediately stood up and cheered, and Mahathir, head of a party that Lakas-NUCD can only dream of equaling in its skill at holding on to power, became the champion of emancipated Asiatics. He had a point; nonetheless, the fact is that corruption is quite prevalent in our part of the world; and while there may be disgusting hypocrisy in having Caucasian countries -such as Italy, and to a certain extent, the United States, a country that gave the world Tammany Hall and the Daly Machine of Chicago- grouse about corruption, one can't ignore countries like Indonesia, where the family of Suharto has its fingers in many more pies than the Marcoses ever did - and which will soon have its finger in the Alabang Skyway pie, a tasty dish indeed. Not to mention the suspicion held by some quarters that Malaysia's sudden interest in us -they were pleasantly surprised to see that demand for the Proton Wira exceeded all their expectations, and Mahathir's own daughter being involved in a picture-book project on the Philippines (why us?) - smacks of economic imperialism!

Anyway, let us set aside what Tammany Hall referred to as "honest graft," since our officials may not be particularly noteworthy in the manner by which they enriched themselves (and their friends), corruption-wise; our government does compare unfavorably, with even the most unabashedly crooked of regimes elsewhere, in our slothful civil service. The descent of our civil service into the realm of the incompetent and inefficient is one thing not usually attributed to our colonial masters -particularly the United States. Blame is placed squarely on ourselves, our leaders: a mixed blessing that came with independence!

Recently Joe Almonte - the eminence grise of Philippines 2000 - made another one of those nice-sounding speeches of his, which never fail to trigger alarm bells in the minds of people afraid of an incipient dictatorship. His subject was "The Bureaucracy and Philippines 2000," delivered before the Confederation of Government Employee's Associations, at the Quezon City Sports Club on October 26, 1995. The speech began, naturally enough, with uninhibited praise for the courage and vision of the president and Philippines 2000. He trumpeted about two of FVR's accomplishments, which all but the most savage critics have to admit: he restored political stability, and he has returned (perhaps it would be more accurate to say presided?) over the economy's return to growth. One thing, though, growled Almonte: "reform still has many powerful enemies -while President Ramos has only 32 months ahead of him now." If Ramos goes, who will keep reform on track? Answer: "we must make the civil service the champion and guardian of reform."

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