Fighting corruption with a unicameral parliament

Some people actually think we may not need to import a media-bashing Tony Kwok, the nemesis of corrupt Hongkong public officials, to fight our own incorrigible grafters. Since there is some consensus that the high cost of national and, for that matter, local elections in the Philippines is the "root cause" of political corruption, the proponents of charter change theorize that a shift to a unicameral parliamentary system may be just what this country needs.

Note that we said there was some consensus on the nature of the problem. We didn’t say there was a consensus on the solution. The opponents of chacha think the solution, as well as the entire argument underlying it, is simplistic. On one level of analysis, they are right. But their proposed solutions are problematic too.

Intuitively, one might concede the logic in the argument that since elections to a parliament would only be local, the expenditures of candidates would be much less than those required in a Presidential election or in the election of senators on a nationwide basis. And if a reapportionment of legislative districts should be implemented by a new Parliament, so that more and smaller constituencies are the result, it would take even less votes to get elected to that smaller legislative district.

The conclusion is that lower costs of elections lead to a lesser need or urgency to recover one’s costs and prepare for the next elections through graft and corruption.

Moreover, since it would cost less to get elected, more qualified people would be encouraged to run. The "astronomical" cost of election, it has been argued, is what has made politics the exclusive playground of wealthy businessmen and political dynasties. Indeed, there is often no distinction between durable business interests and seemingly indestructible political clans. They are typically one and the same thing.

The feeding of business and politics off each other goes on both locally and nationally. The only difference is the playing field, which can range from a logging permit in a particular province to a national "business" franchise. The extent and scope of corruption also has to do with how widely one wants to play. One can be happy with being local, or one may want to go national. It all depends on one’s political clout.

The minority in the defunct Consultative Commission, however, believes that this line of argument is "simplistic," insisting that: "Graft and corruption happen because of a mix of many factors including poverty, greed, a cultural predilection for ‘areglo’, the availability of opportunity, and weak monitoring systems and law enforcement."

The minority adds: "The more important point, however, is that solutions to this problem do not require a change in the form of government. Electoral reform that includes campaign expense subsidies and judicial reform that makes catching grafters and administering justice more effective are means that are not dependent on the form of government."

Indeed, the reasons for corruption are more complex than just the imperative to recover costs in the last elections and replenish the campaign kitty for the next electoral war. Political scientists might write learned dissertations about the "paternalism" that years of patronage and largesse have fostered among the poor, or about how a "pre-modern" society might treat electoral votes not as instruments of democratic empowerment but as tradable commodities with a market price.

Sociologists might also obtain research grants to explore the hypothesis that corruption is also reflective of the human food chain, where the powerful derive pleasure from gobbling up or otherwise exploiting the powerless.

To others less academically inclined, corruption is as simple as enabling one to live out a sexual fantasy of being an ancient Chinese emperor with as many wives and concubines as one’s financial resources will allow, or a medieval feudal lord with a penchant for exercising the droit de seigneur with a vassal’s wife.

But rather than expending inordinate amounts of time and energy in trying to analyze the problem, most citizens feel it’s time to act decisively to solve the problem, realizing the work won’t be done in a few months or years. There is just so much dissipation of the public treasury that this economy can take, despite what insatiable bureaucrats might think.

The world community clearly realizes the damage that corruption inflicts on a nation, so much so that the periodic rankings of the world’s most corrupt nations have assumed as much significance as a country’s business competitiveness rating.

The attraction of a unicameral parliamentary system is that it offers a radical systemic approach which might reduce corruption significantly.

I have nothing against reform, but I have my doubts about the ultimate effectiveness of, for example, campaign expense subsidy laws or regulations on campaign contributions. Such laws and regulations are untried in this country. Also, if one is skeptical about the government’s ability to enforce laws generally, you’d have to be reminded that people, not machines, implement electoral reform laws.

Judicial reform is the familiar antidote to this country’s long-standing problems with the administration of justice. But while progress has been made in this area, I think one would have great difficulty persuading people that our justice system successfully works for the common man.

We have, to put it mildly, a long way to go. More important, substantially more funds must be committed to address the problem. For as long as I can remember, judicial reformers have been talking about basically the same things: We need funds to fill up existing vacancies in the prosecution service and in the courts. We need more funds to construct courts, equip them properly, and recruit qualified staff. We need to adjust salaries to attract talent into a government career in the justice system, and persuade prospects of its feasibility as compared to private practice.

It is difficult to predict whether reforms will take hold and, more cogently, how long they will take. While there are great risks in radical change, it may be that taking bold steps now, rather than hoping to change an existing unsatisfactory system, may be the more sensible step.

Obviously, in the end, the people must decide whether the risks must be taken and whether the timing and the rationale for radical change have been established. That was what people had hoped the Consultative Commission would help provide. Sadly, it did not. Instead, the Commission derailed public discussion with its No-El proposal. The Great Debate will just have to take place elsewhere.