Friday, March 14, 2008
2 lawyers seek Glo order to Neri
TWO Cebuano lawyers proposed the signing of a manifesto asking the President to instruct Secretary Romulo Neri to testify in the Senate again.
Lawyers Amay Ong-Vaño and Florencio Villarin made the call in what should have been an apolitical anti-graft forum organized by the Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas for the launching of the Multi-Sectoral Anti-Corruption Council (MSACC).
Ong-Vaño, a member of the Mactan Island Chamber of Commerce, and Villarin, representing a group of retired government executives, were among the signatories to a memorandum of agreement in support of the council.
Overall Deputy Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro said the proposal stepped outside the purview of the council, whose sole task is to coordinate the current anti-graft programs.
Judicial question
“This is a judicial question. But in so far as the ombudsman is concerned, we are apolitical. We don’t really go into this kind of intramurals,” Casimiro said.
Besides, he added, there is an existing anti-graft investigation on the aborted national broadband deal and it has been assigned to a panel that is now conducting its hearing.
Villarin, for his part, said the council should take notice of the fact that executive privilege, which Cabinet members invoked to decline invitations to testify before the senate, “cannot be invoked in proceedings involving criminal violations.”
Steven Rood, country representative of The Asia Foundation, said these incidents of “political corruption” are what create the impression that corruption in the Philippines is massive.
The Asia Foundation is one of the funding sources for the MSACC.
In the Philippines he said, the gains of anti-corruption efforts—the reduced costs of books at the Department of Education and medicines at the health department, for example—are unrecognized.
He cited a survey report that stated how payment of bribes in local government agencies reduced from 55 percent in 2000 to 40 percent in 2007.
But, he added, an international report issued at about the same period the survey results came out still declared the Philippines as among the more corrupt countries in Asia.
The report cited as causes the Hello Garci scandal and, more recently, the broadband deal controversy.
“Even while we can point to gains against corruption, we seemingly remain embroiled in what sometimes looks like a perpetual political crisis,” he said.
“The sad case when it comes to corruption in the Philippines is that the actual magnitude is bad but no worse than in India or Thailand. But (corruption) has been used as a political issue by politicians against each other,” he explained.
Moderate
Worse, he said, politicians bring their conflict before the media and not before judicial bodies. This situation, he added, hurts the country’s image internationally.
Another drawback to the country’s anti-corruption efforts is the public’s tendency to equate success in anti-graft efforts with the conviction of a “big fish.”
To the public’s mind, he said, anti-graft efforts haven’t amounted to much if no convictions are made.
Ong-Vaño, for his part, said corruption among politicians is still the worst.
“The reduction in cost of books and medicines is just a manifestation of moderating the greed, not success,” he said.
“I believe that corruption has not been eradicated or minimized because we have forgotten the concept of crime and punishment. Crimes have been committed with no punishment. To people, since there is no punishment, then maybe it is not a crime,” he added. (KNR)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 14, 2008 issue)
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