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Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Pooled editorial: P2B to fight corruption
If only money could be used like magic wand to make corruption in government vanish or to reduce it to an annoying but small nuisance.
When President Arroyo Monday ordered Department of Budget & Management to release P1 billion, it was also to raise money.
The P1 billion is RP’s counterpart to a $20.685 million (about P1.1 billion) grant from United States under its Millenium Challenge Account.
A whooping amount, more than P2 billion, huge and mouth-watering.
Filipinos can’t help being suspicious and afraid. A large chunk of the fund to fight corruption might just be lost to corruption.
That’s how Filipinos themselves see it. We look at budgeted money as targets of looting. We don’t see full amounts but figures slashed 20 percent to 30 percent as “dues” to graft.
The challenge
Donors or grantors, though, are not unaware of the threat. Thus, they set up safeguards to make leakage minimal and difficult.
The Sun.Star newspapers hope the US Government has tightened the screws. The irony of anti-corruption money being plundered is apparently not lost to planners who packaged the grant: Is that the “challenge” in Millenium Challenge?
Breakdown of millenium account spending seems well-directed: $6.5M for ombudsman personnel training and investigation efficiency, $9.4M for BIR’s Run After Tax Evaders program, $3.1M for Bureau of Customs’ Run After Smugglers program, and $1.4M for Department of Finance’s lifestyle check campaign. It is not yet known if the RP Government’s P1 billion is similarly divided.
It’s, however, actual spending and results that need a close look.
While we want to be upbeat about it, there cannot be premature rejoicing by anyone who means well for this country which still has to improve its anti-corruption ratings.
“Social cancer”
It is crucial for our leaders to set the example by not using the power to pick people to prosecute as devices for keeping, or buying support of, political leaders.
Let the ax fall where it must, tough as it is for a president whose seat of office is perpetually under siege.
The P2 billion fund is surely no magic wand that will free the country of corruption. It will take more than that to excise a “social cancer.”
For starters though, the anti-corruption campaign deserves some cheering — and a lot of watching. [Sun.Star Cebu]
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (June 21, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
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