Cure

Any government office awash with cash is a seedbed of graft and corruption. Pumping P1 billion into the coffers of the various government graft busting agencies may just convert these offices into such kind of seedbeds with the graft busters themselves being engulfed by its enticing tentacles. Putting lots of cash in these offices is like putting land mines and booby traps in the battlefield where the main victims are the very combatants fighting graft and corruption. Hence instead of gaining grounds, the campaign against graft and corruption may suffer a more serious setback.

Like the NPA, graft and corruption cannot simply be defeated by the sheer use and mobilization of money. The P1 billion allotted for this campaign may be put to better use by funding the efforts to eradicate their root causes. Streamlining the bloated bureaucracy by automation of government transactions will certainly minimize human intervention that is the source of many corrupt practices. Fixers will disappear if drivers’ licenses can be renewed faster. "Commissioners" demanding as much as 50 percent cut for the simple release of funds rightfully due and payable will be eliminated if the layers of offices through which the release papers pass will be reduced or completely eliminated.

When a mere government clerk is endowed with some kind of discretion in the performance of his job, there is a clear and present danger that he will use that power to obtain something in return. The quid pro quo becomes bigger and multiplies as the level and extent of power and discretion ascends and increases until it turns into big time graft and corruption. But if there are written, specific and unbending rules and fixed guidelines within which government officials and employees are required to work and perform their functions, use of discretion may be avoided or minimized. To be sure, an Administrative Code and Code of Conduct are already in place, but they are too general to be effective. Besides how many government officials and employees have a working knowledge of those voluminous documents? More effective and useful would be specific guidelines and rules in every government office including perhaps a job description for each position like that obtaining in private corporations. Part of the P1 billion could be used to finance the study and formation of this kind of setup. It can be done. In fact some LGUs and GOCCs have done it.

The campaign against graft and corruption also has a better chance of success even without spending such a huge amount if our politicians will just stop the pernicious practice of patronage politics. When people expect dole outs from their elected officials, there is a greater pressure on the part of these officials to make extra money under the table by using their position of power and influence. The enormous expenses in undertaking a successful election or reelection campaign invariably force politicians to raise campaign funds from every available source. Despite the overwhelming clamor for its abolition as a graft ridden mode of spending public funds, the pork barrel is here to stay because our legislators need it in perpetuating patronage politics.

This is the same kind of politics that has also spawned so many mediocre, incompetent and corrupt officials occupying all sorts of appointive government positions which are used as rewards to pay back political debts. Rare are government appointees without political padrinos. The very few competent, independent and honest officials do not last long and are replaced by political appointees. Even the number one graft buster, the former Ombudsman Marcelo prematurely retired. Thus the public service greatly suffers because public officials perform their jobs invariably subject to the influence of their patrons or the appointing power himself from whom they owe their position and to whom they are beholden. By uprooting this major cause of graft and corruption, more than half the battle is won.

We have been battling graft and corruption off and on since time immemorial. So many grandiose plans have been announced on how to get rid of this menace in governance. Yet so far, not a single big fish has been caught. One big fish may even be able to wiggle out of the comfortable net thrown on him. Now and then the Ombudsman announces punishments meted to erring officials. But all of them are only minor functionaries. Almost two years ago, the Supreme Court ordered the Ombudsman to investigate and prosecute Comelec officials involve in the election computerization scam. But up to now no action has been done. On the contrary, there seems to be persistent attempts to cover up scams that have already been exposed. No amount of money could therefore boost the campaign against corruption because the pervading atmosphere simply does not instill fear on would be grafters and sacred cows.

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