‘Corruptor and corruptee’

Judging from the deluge of emails we received from our regular readers and a number of Filipinos abroad even from as far as South Africa — it is clear that the corruption involving the Bureau of Customs and the pork barrel system both hit a raw nerve. Some of the reactions we got on a recent business column we wrote titled “BOC: ‘Bureau of Corruption’” — gave all kinds of suggestions on how to eradicate the well-entrenched corruption at the Bureau of Customs. There was one suggestion that went so far as to propose that President Aquino himself not only hold office at the BOC but to take over the Bureau itself to keep a tight watch on the things going on, and prevent the “kapal muks powerful forces” from asking for “requests and favors.”

Others want a top-to-bottom shakeup — not just the port collectors that Customs Commissioners Ruffy Biazon ordered to vacate their posts preliminary to a revamp — to weed out the deeply rooted corruption that has festered in the Bureau for so many decades. Others also recommend privatization as another option to professionalize the agency. Many are convinced however that the systemic and systematic corruption in the BOC will not be stopped unless there is a new law that would totally abolish the Bureau and put a new system and a new agency into place by retiring all current personnel and replacing them with professionals like CPA lawyers who will be highly paid. 

The sad truth however is that the BOC is only one agency where corruption has been so deeply entrenched, with most — we are not saying all — departments and bureaus also infected with the virus of bribery and corruption.

But perhaps one of the most easily vulnerable to corruption is the Philippine National Police which was tagged by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International in its latest “Global Corruption Barometer” as the most corrupt institution in the Philippines. Surveys clearly show that Filipinos perceive policemen as “bantay salakay,” with the PNP afflicted not just by a culture of corruption but a “rubout syndrome” as seen by the incidents in Atimonan and the recent Ozamiz/Cadavero debacle.

Even more embarrassing are revelations that PNP applicants and newbie cops cheated in the entrance and promotion examinations — with the cheating discovered through a computer-aided answer pattern analysis that revealed a disturbingly consistent and statistically unbelievable pattern of same wrong answers, of all things! While the anomaly occurred in Mindanao, people couldn’t help but wonder if the same situation has also occurred in other parts of the country and just how long this has been going on considering the absence of computer technology in the past.

Aside from the PNP, another government entity that’s been hogging news headlines lately is the Department of Transportation and Communications with tales of bribery and corruption amounting to multimillions. Aside from the MRT-3 expansion, another big-ticket project being questioned involves the P3.8 billion licensing contract where irregularities in the bidding are alleged once again. And let’s not forget the “pork” where barrels of funds were apparently wasted due to fake non-government organizations proposing non-existent projects. It may well be that the legislators themselves are not aware that the NGOs that asked them for funds are bogus, but it’s not unlikely that someone somewhere within their staff knew that pork barrel funds are being funneled to ghost projects.

It’s quite obvious that money, drugs, smuggling, illegal gambling and tax evasion are key elements of bribery and corruption. But perhaps more importantly, people have to examine what factors really comprise the “heart and soul” of corruption — and that could only happen if there is a corruptor and a “corruptee.”

As disclosed by Transparency International in its latest report, almost half of survey respondents said they believe ordinary Filipinos can make a difference in the fight against corruption and yet many of them admitted having paid bribes in the last 12 months to the police, the judiciary, tax authorities, education officials and even to the lowest clerk in government agencies thinking it would make things go faster. People don’t realize that once bribery starts there is no end. As they say, “walang katapusan.”

Corruption is a two-way street, and it can occur in various forms and at different levels, involving both the sins of omission and commission. A token in exchange of a small favor, calling a Customs agent to delay an inspection, paying someone to “shortcut” the process, awarding a mega-contract to a friendly corporation, paying off a traffic cop to avoid getting a citation – whether on a grand scale or small — it’s obvious that corruption involves both a giver and a taker, a briber and a “bribee,” a corruptor and “corruptee.” 

Customs Deputy Commissioner Danny Lim blamed the interference of “powerful forces” as a reason for Customs officials’ inability to do their work and go after smugglers. But he refuses to name these so called “powerful forces” or “padrinos” to the public. Obviously this does not sit well with many Filipinos all over the world because as BOC intelligence head – it his duty to expose them or report them directly to the President and let P-Noy expose them to the public like what he did during the last four SONAs.

As one of our readers pointed out, this is something that is hard to fathom. Instead of standing up for what is right and lawful, we ignore wrongdoings so as not to get into trouble. If you hold a position of responsibility and know about wrongdoings yet you do nothing or refuse to report it, then you become a   “corruptee” yourself.

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Email: babeseyeview@yahoo.com