Saturday, July 21, 2007 Editorials: Corruption as ‘two-way traffic’
DISTRICT Customs Collector Ricardo Belmonte complaining about the Bureau of Customs being considered the most corrupt government agency by respondents in a Social Weather Station (SWS) survey is expected.
This is because, in the final analysis, surveys like this are mostly perception, the contrary view of SWS’ Mahar Mangahas notwithstanding.
That survey reflected partly the experiences of businessmen-respondents and partly their perception; it was not a product of actual probe into government corruption.
To be fair to Belmonte, it is possible the customs bureau is not the most corrupt, although it would also be wrong to claim that particular government agency is clean.
Many-sided
But while the SWS survey on corruption in government is partly perception, it veered away from the usual one-sidedness of other similar undertakings, those that put too much stress on the bureaucracy and less on the other contributory factors.
Common sense tells us that corrupt government employees are able to do their thing because there are clients who oblige them or are forced to play along.
Or simply put corruption is a many-sided act.
Dishonesty
Smuggling, for example, does not start with the corrupt customs officials but with the smugglers, who are businessmen.
And the net is wide: the act could not be consummated and kept secret without law enforcers getting paid to look the other way, other businessmen knowing about it but keeping silent, and even media people hiding it from public view for a fee.
Survey or no survey, the public knows that only few businessmen follow basic honest practices, whether in issuing receipts which was one of the SWS survey’s findings, but more so in greasing the palms of corrupt government officials.
And this dishonesty extends even to the less powerful sectors of society.
Mechanism
Acting Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas Virginia Palanca-Santiago is therefore correct in pointing out that fighting corruption is a “two-way traffic” that involves not just the government but also the public.
The problem is that no effective mechanism has been instituted to attend to the usually hidden aspect of the corruption process: the corrupt elements in the private sector.
