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Monday, July 31, 2006
Aid, incentives of limited value
By Mayette Q. Tabada
Special to Sun.Star Cebu
GOVERNMENT’S fight against corruption may have received a P1-billion shot-in-the-arm from the United States, but it will take a three-cornered fight—involving the state, civil society and media watchdogs—to get the country out of the pit of irregularities in public spending.
According to a July 27, 2006 report in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the $25-million grant—coursed through the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), a program rewarding “countries that govern well”—was matched by a P1-billion counterpart fund put up by President Arroyo last month.
This P2-billion “anti-corruption war chest” will boost the Office of the Ombudsman in prosecuting cases involving government officials, as well as the Department of Finance, which is pursuing three anti-graft programs in internal revenue and customs.
The same report noted that the country has not qualified for the MCA list due to its “under-performance in fighting corruption and easing its fiscal woes.”
To get out of its present “threshold status,” the country can avail itself of US grants to improve, be elevated to MCA status, and then vie for rewards under the $1.5-billion MCA program.
But going by the 2006 Social Weather Stations’ (SWS) “Survey of Enterprises on Corruption,” popular perception is unfavorable about “most government agencies’ sincerity in fighting corruption.”
Compared to the 2005 survey ratings, there was a significant drop in the perception of the state’s anti-corruption fight, as perceived by managers of 700 enterprises in Metro Manila, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao, Cavite-Laguna-Batangas, and Cagayan de Oro-Iligan.
In the 2005 SWS survey, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Philippine Stock Exchange were rated “very good” in its “net sincerity in fighting corruption.” In the 2006 surveys, local Roman Church leaders topped.
In contrast, the Bureaus of Customs and Internal Revenue scored highest in the 2006 SWS respondents’ perception of agencies having a “bad reputation for being corrupt.”
In its coverage of corruption, media was generally perceived as accurate. In Cebu, 41 percent of the respondents viewed the press as accurate, with 30 percent contending that the reporting was exaggerated and 28 percent, that it was understated.
Watching media
While the 2006 survey paints a favorable picture of media’s social responsibility in monitoring corruption, a comparison with the June 20-July 6, 2000 SWS national survey shows a decrease of the public’s perception of media accuracy.
According to the 2000 SWS survey, 63 percent of the respondents said that the reports were accurate most of the time. Radio came out slightly better, with 63 percent saying that the news on this medium was most of the time accurate, compared to daily newspapers and TV news (62 percent).
However, radio was also the medium with the highest number of respondents (22 percent) viewing its news broadcast as most of the time exaggerated. This was followed by TV (20 percent) and newspapers (18 percent).
An independent and uncowed media is perceived as crucial for checking and balancing the government.
“The most important anti-corruption tools... are increased and improved investigations, reporting on corruption, and more creative use of Internet sources,” points out Periodistas Frente a la Corrupcion (Journalists Against Corruption), an anti-corruption project in El Salvador.
Uneven terrain
However, media observers say that media has, in many instances, fallen short of its social duty to “shape the media terrain through which politicians walk.”
According the electronic bulletin “AlterNet,” Norman Solomon is skeptical about the independence of journalists, pointing out that media companies are “often financed by many of the same business interests that finance political parties.”
Solomon and the US media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting say that the accuracy and relevance of media is jettisoned frequently for competition and profit.
Inadequacies of media coverage are also caused by other factors like the lack of support and resources for investigative journalism, specially the risk to life in a country recording the highest number of journalists killed.
The specialized forms of journalism-investigative (following a people, paper or electronic trail to expose corruption) and explanatory (explaining how participatory governance can make public service work better)-require a high level of media’s commitment to public service, given that the government and even the private sector is antagonistic to “negative reporting” that might shake investors’ confidence.
In his paper, John Callebaut, Asia program officer at the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), says that a vigilant press can monitor better “economic transactions that do not serve the public interest.”
Larger role
Media and other autonomous watchdogs can “encourage government accountability to economic constituents.”
The path to transparency secures fiscal health, political stability, and investors’ confidence, Callebaut stresses.
Quality journalism
The press needs to grow into its larger role in making history, was one insight gained after a 1997 CIPE conference organized by the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility and the Asian Institute of Management.
Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines discussed access to economic information in Southeast Asia. Among their recommendations was the need to improve the quality of economics journalism.
Training
“Better training and deeper understanding of basic economic and business principles” can help reporters and editors not just understand and write better on the issues.
It can also alert the media and arm them for gathering evidence to expose irregularities.
Since there may be basis for believing that “one gets the leadership, as well as the press, that one deserves,” civil society must be assertive and skilled in demanding that media focuses on agenda deemed essential for the public.
Aside from conducting its own investigations, media can focus on stakeholder-led innovations monitoring the use of public funds.
Service
This is public service in highlighting what citizens do to improve systems and prosecute the corrupt.
Media can also learn about the intricacies of untangling the bureaucratic maze, a knowledge that may come handy when journalists conduct their own investigations.
But in-depth and sustained coverage of participatory governance-such as the programs of the Coalition Against Corruption that monitors government bidding and awarding, barangays’ use of their Internal Revenue Allotment, medicine procurement, delivery and inventory in government hospitals and regional health centers, and the congressmen’s use of “pork barrel” funds, among others-can still be media’s first and most meaningful contribution.
Such reports show that volunteerism and citizenship can make a difference. That corruption can be stopped.
And that one does not need foreign aid and incentives to do right by one’s country.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (July 31, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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