Duterte visits Batanes, binds LGUs to stop corruption

MANILA, Philippines - President Duterte wants local executives on board in his campaign against corruption, saying he knows his campaign promise to stamp out graft would not succeed without the help of the entire bureaucracy.

“Corruption has to stop. I also bind the local government,” Duterte said yesterday in Basco, Batanes where he visited victims of Typhoon Ferdie.

He also cited the slow process of releasing documents in local government offices.

At the start of his term, Duterte vowed to cut red tape in government transactions. He warned that the ax might fall on the heads of agencies.

“In the Bureau of Internal Revenue, it takes only two days. Others have gone online… no problem about them. So I would like local governments to follow suit by adopting in the most expeditious way the release of documents and papers needed by (the people),” Duterte said.

He stressed that the “ideal” number of days for waiting for official documents is two to three days in the national government.

“It will not be years, it will only be one month for everybody.  No extensions,” he said. “I’m telling you now, let us give the Filipino a respite from all of these years suffering corruption in government.”

The other day, Duterte said he felt insulted that corruption remains prevalent even after he repeatedly warned government workers about it.

“Now that there is still corruption, I feel it as an insult really. Because that is one of my campaign promises – I will stop corruption. That was the only line that was repeated by my mouth all the months of the campaign,” he said.

Duterte said he knows that corruption is not easy to address. But he appealed anew to the public to help solve the problem by being vigilant against all forms of corruption in government.

“If I could just get a fraction of the corruption in our government, I think it would be okay. I cannot erase all. I cannot stop it. But I can minimize it,” Duterte said in a speech the other day at the oath taking of newly appointed local executives.

“Right now, I don’t know if it’s in keeping with the right of the people to be informed and the right to air a grievance vis-à-vis the right of the person to keep his privacy. But I am trying to strike a happy balance here,” he added.

Asked if the President is shifting his strategy from drugs to corruption, Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar and presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella said corruption is among the problems that Duterte promised during the campaign.

Andanar said only the President knows the phasing of “this war against the ailments of society.”

“Let’s wait for President Duterte’s barometer. We will implement with full force what the President intends to do,” he added.

But Duterte’s presidency is marked by allegations of summary killings and human rights abuses in his bloody war on drugs. He received international flak, mainly from the United Nations, United States and European Union, for the over 3,000 deaths so far in the drug war.