Corruption in the Philippines

There are two types of corruption and the two are often viewed as if they were one and the same when in fact they are completely different in substance, in scope as well as in every motivational factor. 

There is small-time corruption that involve severely underpaid low-level bureaucrats who will move your papers through the system faster for 500 pesos. This low-level bureaucrat earns under 10,000 pesos a month and cannot feed his family with this starvation income. Almost every government employee falls in this category and is forced by the circumstance of his low income to accept bribes. The near universality of this condition is what makes it possible for outside observers to tar all Filipinos as corrupt crooks. This is unfair to so many poor people trying to make an honest living in unjust conditions. Most of these people do not have other survival options.

The second type is BIG TIME CORRUPTION. This is corruption at the top done by people who have so much money that they do not have to be corrupt. This type of corruption is fed by a greed so excessive and so irrational that it cannot be defined by a rational mind. There are two elements involved in this type of corruption.  In the correct order of importance, these two elements are:

1.)  The bribe-giver. Usually a rich businessman who wants more and no matter how much he has, will always want more. Bribing is his way of getting an unfair advantage over his competitors. The briber is almost always the initiator… the active ingredient in the bribery process.

2.) The bribe-taker.  Usually a high-level government official who is often as rich or richer than the bribe-giver but who shares the insatiable greed of the bribe-giver.

The bribe-giver is often a highly respected “lion-in-the-community” who does his evil deeds through intermediaries, creating moats of defenses between him and his crimes. He is the SATAN in the process of corruption because he is always hidden behind the scenes, invisible to all.

The bribe-taker is not much better.He is always a high-level government official who is already so rich that he does not need to take bribes. He is wealthy enough to look after the interests of the general public and to leave behind a legacy of public good that would ensure his name and reputation for generations. But his greed is so pathologically enormous that he chooses to eschew all the good he can do for the greater number in exchange for getting more money than he could possibly use in 5 lifetimes.

The bribe-giver’s name seldom comes up. The bribe-taker’s name almost always crops up because the sums involved are so large and because the number of people involved in the bribe-delivery process is always large enough that leaks in the system are almost a certainty.

Eduardo Gimenez