A crusade against graft and corruption

The social contract that is the cornerstone of all civil society is that government is set up by the people themselves and is supported by them through payment of taxes so that government, in turn, will serve the needs of the people. The people surrender the power of governance to the government in return for the protection they get from it as well as the receipt of government services that makes for a decent quality of life, if not a high quality of living, for the people.

Through the payment of taxes, the people are able to maintain the costs of their government as well as the costs of effective governance which is the provision for their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, health care, employment, education as well as the construction and establishment of the infrastructure and utilities requisite of a comfortable and modern society.

An equally important task of government is the creation of a favorable economic atmosphere for business so that businessmen, as the prime mover of the economy, will invest in productive economic activities, create employment opportunities for the people and raise revenues for the government in the form of payment of business and transaction taxes.

Of course, government, being a living entity, is and can only be run by people themselves – the government officials and employees, both elected and appointed. The administration officials would be the officials, both elected and appointed, from the current political regime in power while the government bureaucracy would be the mass of appointed officials and employees that make up the civil service. In all cases, they occupy public offices.

Ideally, these public officers and employees occupy a pubic office that is a public trust. The office is a public trust because the occupant thereof holds the position in trust, as trustee, with the people as the beneficiaries. In other words, the occupant is there to serve the people through the proper use of the powers and resources of the office.

In turn and ideally, the public official or employee is paid a decent salary commensurate to his position as well as well-deserved benefits so that he looks forward to a career path in government that guarantees a bright future for himself and his family.

Yet, for all this defined and supposed symbiotic relationship between the government officials and the people it is most factual, if disheartening, to note that practically all governments in the world are plagued by a scourge and social disease that goes by the name of graft and corruption. It almost seems that it is an endemic result or consequence of the exercise of governmental power.

Many times, the very reason for the existence of government which is to serve the people is negated by the very actuations of the occupying officials and employees so much so that said very reason for government’s existence ceases to exist. This is the reason why many times in history governments are violently toppled through revolution and civil strife by their very own people who take by force what they cannot gain by peaceful means.

Always, the root of the people’s discontent with their government is the social cancer known as graft and corruption. Graft and corruption in our country has many causes, foremost of which is the manner of conduct of our electoral process.

In the Philippines, our brand of democracy is easily a farce if not a downright bad joke. In democracy, Philippine style, while the people have and exercise the right of suffrage in the selection of their public officials, the very process of election is characterized by an in-bred system and tradition of cheating using guns, goons and gold such that the electoral winners by general rule are the dishonest, the inept, and the exploitative – they who believe that public office, far from being a public trust and vehicle for service, is a personal domain and perch for the amassing of more wealth and perks. And damn the people.

As the saying in the manufacturing and information technology sector goes: "garbage in, garbage out", so do we get garbage governance. The qualities sought for in putting up a candidate not being his leadership qualities – of character, honesty, integrity, dedication to duty, and love of country – but his winnability in the polls by reason of his popularity and money, the very process of choosing our public officials is innately defective that we cannot produce the right and rightful leaders.

The money and the popularity will carry the candidate, and the money spent in the election process will be the overriding obsession of the winner now to recover upon his assumption into office, with a lot of profit to boot.

With a pre-occupation on the part of our elected government officials to recover their "investment" during the campaign period, it comes as no surprise that the people will not be getting the rightful service from their leaders. Their basic needs for food, clothing, shelter, medical care, employment and education will take a backseat. Save for the businessmen who supported the winning candidates, the legitimate business community will not get the necessary government support needed to expand much less maintain their business. Our entrepreneurs again will have no access to necessary credits on a long-term and low-interest basis that they so direly need in order to grow in size and be competitive with their foreign counterparts. Poverty, which is the lot of more than 70 percent of our hapless people will continue to plague them like a curse on a forsaken land.

Another major cause of graft and corruption in our system is the exceedingly low salaries of our civil servants, especially the rank and file who make up the civil service. Their grossly inadequate compensation breeds a low morale and consequently affects their performance in the delivery of governmental services to the people. There is no passion to serve, no incentive to perform at one’s best, no willingness to sacrifice for one’s country. Worse, with a salary level that cannot ensure a decent quality of life for themselves and their families, they are prone to take bribes, many times even demanding "grease money" to perform their mandated tasks.

Another cause of graft and corruption is, curiously, the law against graft and corruption itself. Our anti-graft law lists the graft and corrupt practices and provides penalties for their commissions. While the law exacts punishments for violations thereon it carries no provision for awards and rewards of recognition for good public service. Worse still, the statute encourages government inaction as a safe way for civil servants to avoid possible prosecution for violations of the law.

While the sins of commission of our corrupt and graft-prone officials are rampant and economically destructive, the sins of omission of our civil servants are no less harmful and pervasive. Many times it happens that our government officials and employees do not act on official matters brought before them for fear of risking a suit under our Anti-Graft Law. They would rather leave the papers un-acted or give the private citizen the run-around. The worse kind of inaction, of course, is when the civil servant delays action to induce "grease money." The economic costs and effects of such official inaction and delay are enormous.

In the end, the losses of our people becomes the loss of government. For government will be unable to raise revenues from the people and the businessmen who have no purchasing power in the first place to be able to pay their taxes. Government is thus deprived of sufficient finances to render government service much less promote effective governance. The cycle is vicious and all because of graft and corruption.

While the statements we make here about our government officials and employees would seem widespread, this is not to say there are no good men and women out there in the public sector doing their level best to serve the country and people. Indeed, there are dedicated, honest, capable and esteemed government officials and employees who do justice to the positions they occupy and who give the people reason to hope. To these venerable public servants we bow our heads in salute. May we have many more of them.

For example, we doff our hats off in thanks and admiration to Secretary for Special Concerns Norberto Gonzales and his staff, the provincial officials of Aurora and the officers of its Provincial Development Council, as well as the officers and employees of the NEDA, Region III. Transacting with them is an exercise in governmental efficiency, not to mention a pleasure. Unfortunately, we cannot say the same for the officials of the province of Quezon and the municipality of General Nakar.

In the end, we must realize that democracy is not a self-operating system. It takes effective and proper coordination between the government officials and the people for the system to work. More importantly, it takes vigilance on the part of the people to ever keep an eye on irregular, illegal and anomalous acts of our government officials and employees.

The challenge is for our people to extol the good and efficient public servants and at the same time to publicly identify and weed-out the bad and corrupt. We encourage our citizens, those with sordid stories of encounters with corrupt government officials and employees to come out in the open and, with solid evidence, file the corresponding cases against these hoodlums behind government desks. Verily, it is our duty as a concerned citizen to do so. Let us break the silence and let us muster the courage to take positive action. In this regard, we suggest the creation of a private civic organization of volunteer lawyers and civic-minded citizens to help and assist people with valid complaints against public servants. This group shall serve as a private watchdog of the bureaucracy with the mission to exorcise the grafters in government so that only the good will remain.

If there is any redeeming value to the tele-novela-like sensational publicity of a purely domestic affair as the Kris and Joey spat, it is the courage displayed by Kris in publicly exposing a shameful violation of her person, even at a great possible detriment to her name, to her reputation, and to her career.

If all of us private citizens who have been wronged, through graft and corrupt practices of government officials and employees, will publicly stand-up and, in turn, take them to public and judicial accounting, then there is a solid chance, a ray of hope, that we could finally get a good government that we truly deserve and proudly call our own.

To you grafters we say: Beware!

You may write your comments / suggestion at 15/F Equitable Bank Tower Paseo de Roxas, Makati City or through e-mail at HYPERLINK "mail to: [email protected]"

(Editor’s note: Atty. Roxas is writing a limited series of articles dealing with financial matters and other important business topics. He is available for speaking engagements on the subject matters of his articles.)