Posted by cool_ambo on April 26th, 2010 | Comments Off on Corruption
CORRUPTION
This is a dirty word. It is played by dirty, underhanded tricks.
Every candidate for President invokes the fight against corruption to get elected. In fact, ALL the candidates for ALL the elections in the Philippines say they will fight corruption. This is easier said than done. None of these candidates can say HOW they will fight corruption. This would be analogous to saying one will cook Cordong Bleu without having a sense of how it is written or pronounced.
Promises, promises, all the past Presidents made these. Corruption still rules in the country. Even Ferdinand Marcos started out as being corrupt-free, as he promised. Afterwards he got carried away by his mania for tearing down the oligarchic institutions and became an oligarch himself. It is because he stayed too long as President that he became too complacent for the country’s good. He had peace and order established for a while. Along this line he had the support of the Americans who were only too happy to apply in the Philippines what was the erstwhile successful solution to the communist threat in Latin America—the installation of a dictator.
The next President of the Philippines will also be corrupt, or more specifically, will be corrupted. They would not be able to say no especially to those people that he could not, and would not say no. This practice is as inherent to Philippine politics as is the rule of no-party-no-money. This is, after all, a democratic country and as such, favors and relations take priority over rules; more so because the population have become dense enough to get people to hobnob closer together. One sees the same pockmarked faces and the same flat noses everywhere and in such close proximity that they become reminders of past favors and influences. The presidential candidate who says he will fight corruption may get elected as President but it is doubtful he would succeed.
Think about it this way—–this man, the former movie star whom the majority of the moviegoers affectionately call ERAP, nearly succeeded in shutting the door on corruption. He did this by turning himself into an inaccessible junction for underhanded transactions by hitherto contracting businessmen. This is most probably the hidden reason for his getting booted out of Malacanang. Erap hindi kurap!

But what am I saying? I am saying that corruption stems from contracts and agreements involving the siphoning of money and/or securing favorable influences from the government the result of which is the unwarranted loss of benefits to the country and the people. Now, these contracts and transactions the President must undertake if he has to run the government. But his function would therefore be to engage in such transactions in a delicate manner, agreeing only if there would not be any exorbitant and unreasonable loss to the coffers of the treasury. These contracts must therefore have a real and direct benefit to the people. Presidents don’t initiate these contracts. His cohorts do.
Alas, some presidentiables do not have some grasp of this problem. Some of them even choose which problem to tackle, or which war to confront. Ay, buhay! 