POVERTY AND CORRUPTION IN THE PHILIPPINES

Street Stories: "Human Rights at Stake" by Claire Delfin

With his skinny physique, tanned shabby skin, and head covered with grey hair, Oscar Dela Cruz looks old. He is barely in his forties but says working each day under the sun watching over parked cars has aged him quickly.

He earns about PhP 100 (roughly USD 2) a day - just enough to sustain his family of seven with a kilo of rice and some sardines. Some days the family has to skip meals when he has to divert the little he has to cover his children's school requirements. He is just thankful none of them is sick - otherwise, they would have nothing to eat at all.

And so, Dela Cruz couldn't hide his disgust when he reads a tabloid with its headlines about congressional probes on the multimillion-peso fertilizer fund scam and World Bank investigations into alleged collusion on bidding for road project contracts. "Ang hirap ng buhay namin. Samantalang yung iba, ninanakaw lang ang pera ng bayan na pwede sanang gamitin para matulungan kaming mahihirap (Our life is so hard. And here are people who just rob government money that could have been used to help us poor people)."

The Philippines has been ranked as among the world's most corrupt by, among others, the Berlin-based non-governmental organization Transparency International. Corruption has become so widespread here that that scandals coming out one after the other dominate the news. Worse, many of these scandals are linked to Malacañang Palace and the first family. President Gloria Arroyo was perceived as the most corrupt in Philippine history in a survey done by Pulse Asia in 2007.
Corruption has diverted away whatever meager resources that could have been extremely helpful to alleviate the lives of poor Filipinos. The Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC), a government body tasked to investigate and hear administrative cases and complaints against erring presidential appointees, has revealed that in the Philippines, an average of 20 percent of the country's annual budget goes to corruption.

In 2008, the national budget was PhP 1.227 trillion (USD 26 billion). The budget for 2009 is pegged at an all-time high of PhP 1.415 trillion (USD 30 billion) as the government wants to boost spending to shield the economy from a global slump. A provision in the bill requiring reporting transparency was recently taken out by the government despite congressional and media protests.
PAGC chairperson Teresita Baltazar says the money lost to corruption "could have been a lot to fund spending for social services like education, healthcare, housing and livelihood capital, and infrastructure."

Human rights violation
For the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the level of corruption in the Philippines has reached a "humanitarian crisis at its core," encroaching and eating up not only the right of every citizen to good governance, freedom, and decent life, but as well as her and his dignity. "It is a very serious violation of human rights," says CHR chairperson Leila de Lima.
"Absent from anti-corruption analysis are humans rights concerns, in particular how we define our corruption and how it adversely impacts on the enjoyment of rights, especially of the poor and vulnerable," she adds.
She adds that the pervasive corruption in the Philippines has "led us into our quagmire now � the poor are less educated, have less access to health and economic opportunity, and are less able to uplift themselves from their own poverty.''
Yet despite that, in a recent speech delivered in Manila to an Integrity and Human Rights conference which linked the issue of corruption with human rights, she insisted "now is not yet the time to smoke out those without clean hands."

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its 2008 Asia Pacific Human Development Report says that corruption not only damaged and weakened national institutions and resulted in inequitable social services but has also resulted in judicial 'injustice', economic inefficiencies and unchecked environmental exploitations.
"And it hits hardest at the poor � who often depend heavily on public services and the natural environment and are least able to pay bribes for essential services that should be theirs by right," says the report entitled "Tackling Corruption, Transforming Lives."

Corruption in many fronts
The report adds that in the Asia-Pacific region, the least trusted authorities in terms of integrity are the police, the judiciary, tax offices, education and medical services.
It also says that even in the media, the supposed principal watchdogs monitoring and exposing corruption, there lurks corruption. The practice of cash-filled envelopes given to journalists in press conferences has persisted in Indonesia as well as in the Philippines.
So-called "envelopmental journalism" is often attributed to the low salaries journalists traditionally receive, making it easier to tempt them with cash gifts. Journalists in the Philippines typically earn just about 200 US dollars a month and even high profile regional TV presenters are on record as having quit their jobs to work in call centers where the pay is far better.

In the Philippines, the practice of "ATM journalism" has also become common. Reporters receive discreet and regular pay-offs through their automated teller machine (ATM) accounts, which are usually in the names of relatives, rather than the reporters themselves.
Corruption indeed is prevalent not only in government, but in practically all sectors, all strata of Philippine society. But according to CHR's de Lima, what makes it worse is the utter apathy of many Filipinos. "We find ourselves in that curiously awkward and exquisitely pained middle ground of neither denouncing it nor embracing it."
It could be due to a culture that breeds and traps the country in a cycle of corruption. Mutual help and obligation, family loyalties and political patronage, which are well-entrenched in the Filipino culture, have often been blamed as the root of corruption.

Fight vs. corruption
Corruption in the Philippines is well-ingrained in the systems of governance, and that any change of leadership is not enough to curb corruption. In fact, there have been two mass uprisings that pulled two corrupt presidents out of Malacañang, but the dominance of graft, bribery and fund diversion has not been down an inch.

So what Filipinos need is not another political revolt, according to de Lima. It should instead be a revolution that changes the Filipino psyche as well as the "configuration of political power."
This time, it's no longer enough to just name and shame corrupt officials. She says it is about empowering all to act and to demand good governance. To do otherwise will make them "tools to the perpetuation of corruption."
PAGC says there have been several measures undertaken to the fight against corruption, and gains have been made in some of these.
Some bureaucratic processes have been streamlined to reduce red tape and fast-track transactions. PAGC has also spearheaded the strengthening of internal audit units in every government agency, has pushed for the participation of volunteer observers in biddings, and has lobbied for anti-graft legislative measures, among others.

It has tapped non-government organizations and civil society groups to help out. "If no one's watching, corruption thrives," says Baltazar.
Challenging economic times may even see the situation worsen, says UNDP Country Director Renaud Meyer. Global recession sees opportunities for corruption increase with decisions on how to align funds which supposedly aim to mitigate the impact of the crisis. And second, there will be the 2010 presidential elections where a fair amount of campaign money is likely to be drawn from government coffers.
Unfortunately, and as the UNDP puts it, "the real price of corruption is not paid in currency."
"The true costs are eroded opportunities, increased marginalization of the disadvantaged and feelings of injustice."

Oscar Dela Cruz knows only too well what those printed words mean in practice. His family's pitiful prospects he says are thanks to institutional and governmental corruption that helps guarantee poverty. Philippine Human Rights Reporting Project

(Taken with permission from www.rightsreporting.net. The author is a television news reporter of GMA Network, Inc. and is a regular contributor of special reports on women, children, education, health, and the environment to the network's news website GMANews.TV.)