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Saturday, January 14, 2006
Carvajal: Lesser evil
By Orlando P. Carvajal
One thing is crystal clear. We live in an imperfect world. For as long as humans not angels roam the earth, evil will always be part of life’s kaleidoscope. Living, somebody once said rightly, is making the most out of a bad situation. Moral choices in an imperfect world are very often not between good and evil but between evil and a lesser evil.
The Philippines, therefore, has no monopoly of corruption. Grease money has been, is, and will always be, a part of doing business with governments all over the world. We, however, might have the evil kind of corruption while others have chosen a lesser evil sort of system or practice.
In the US, for instance, corruption is legalized through the lobby system. Lobbyists openly throw expensive parties, underwrite vacation trips and otherwise give all sorts of perks to government officials in order to get contracts for their clients.
Lobbying costs, of course, are recovered through project overprice. With few exceptions, however, the projects are delivered according to specs and none is worse for the practice. The recent scandal involving Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff showcases a lobby that went too far with its excesses.
Indonesia too is supposed to be more corrupt than the Philippines. Again overpricing is the method of choice. The difference is grease money is skimmed off the top (the overprice) only and the project is built and delivered according to specs.
In the Philippines, overprice for a project is also standard practice. The difference is that the project is either not delivered at all or built way below the agreed specs. We have payrolls with ghost names for jobs that are never done. We have roads that are first class in the map but are third class or even non-existent in reality.
I am reminded here of the infamous Naga-Minglanilla road about three or four years ago. It was so poorly constructed that almost immediately after it was completed, a new one had to be built. Yet, I do not remember hearing of any body investigated much less indicted for such a scandalous and callous waste of people’s money.
We are not asking our government officials to be angels. We can live with over-price like so many rich and not-so-rich countries do. But we cannot live with substandard or, worse, ghost projects.
We should have laws that punish severely any form of degradation or non-delivery of a project. If corruption must exist, we should at least, for love of country, adopt the lesser evil of skimming the grease money off the top only and delivering projects with standard specs so all parties are happy not just politicians and contractors.
Can we ask for this modicum of decency from them?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 14, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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