EDITORIAL - Imparting indelible lessons

The secretary-general of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council was fired by President Duterte the other day for corruption, Malacañang announced.

Falconi Millar decried the “demolition job” by people he had “annoyed,” and claimed he had resigned from the HUDCC hours before the announcement was made by presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo. But the President himself said he had signed the “dismissal order” for “a certain Millar” on allegations of corruption.

Before his stint in the HUDCC, Millar served as undersecretary of the Department of Tourism, and was one of several DOT officials whose foreign travels were questioned by the Commission on Audit. This did not stop his transfer to the HUDCC and the task force that is overseeing the rehabilitation of Marawi City after the five-month terrorist siege last year.

The charges against Millar have not been made public, so there is speculation that he might yet get another government post in the near future. The President has said that the campaign against corruption is a priority of his administration. He has often said that even “a whiff of corruption” would be enough for him to sack a government official.

Firing officials who are accused of graft, however, is just one step in this campaign. If indelible lessons are to be imparted so that corruption is discouraged, justice must be rendered and appropriate penalties imposed on offenders. There must be a clear message that corruption does not go unpunished in this country.

So far, however, no such message has been sent since the collapse of the Marcos dictatorship. The lesson imparted so far is that in this country, only petty thieves who pick pockets, snatch cell phones or steal a few thousand pesos of people’s money end up in prison. Those who steal billions from public coffers get to keep their loot and even win elective office.

Corruption pays in this country, and large-scale plunder even more so, allowing the crook to buy the best justice that money can buy. Only when this situation changes will a campaign against corruption succeed.