Sunday, March 23, 2008 Filipino culture 'empowers' fixers
DID the Pharisees reach Judas through a fixer?
They don’t charge in silver coins; still, fixers, according to a newly launched book on graft and corruption, operate in all levels of the bureaucracy and all three branches of government.
“Fixing Society,” by Dr. Ronald Amorando, presents how fixers operate within the agencies they are based in and how fixing is committed.
Amorando is the national coordinator of the Ehem Anti-Corruption Project of the Philippine Province of the Society of Jesus.
The book also highlights how Filipino culture not only tolerates the existence of fixers and fixing, but often welcomes it.
Two-faced
While a person might have a “strong and unanimous view that fixing is etymologically, conceptually, legally and morally fraught with corruption,” that same person may just as easily approach a fixer to avoid long lines at an agency where he has a transaction.
“While cultural norms are ambivalent, there are certain norms and traits that breed fixing in the bureaucratic environment,” Dr. Amorando wrote.
One cultural phenomenon that encourages fixers is the “Filipino predilection towards connections,” Amorando said.
“One looks for somebody in order to draw on a relationship in order to get things done,” he said.
Most Filipinos tolerate and even welcome fixing because they perceive it as a “warm mechanism for personal accommodation and treatment” as opposed to the “cold and impersonal services of the formal bureaucratic organization,” Amorando said in the book.
Getting paid
Most people don’t want to wait in line, he added. Add to that the tendency to transact on the final hour, the indignation felt when told to follow guidelines and procedures, and, on the part of the fixer, “the dark side of the Filipino entrepreneurial spirit: Filipinos want to profit even in public transactions.”
Fixing, according to Amorando, runs the gamut from expediting a transaction to the falsification of supporting documents.
In simple fixing, the person gets paid on top of the transaction fee.
In more complex transactions, where part of the tasks is the reduction of the official fee—for example, a lower tax assessment at the Bureau of Internal Revenue or lower tariff at the Bureau of Customs—money that should go to the nation’s treasury ends up with the fixers for the reduced appraisal.
Why not, Amorando proposed, deploy mobile ushers and usherettes in government agencies to help the public with their transactions, instead of simply forcing the public to transact with officials sitting behind desks?
Learn from them
“The bureaucracy can learn a lot from how professional fixers conduct their activities. What makes professional fixers effective is their personalized service and connections extended to their clients. It is not just bureaucratic effectiveness and efficiency that matters, but also interpersonal relationships and personalized service,” he said.
He also cited the need to have information desks or help centers, as well as flowcharts for transactions. Another idea is to organize professional fixers and accredit them as service providers.
There’s a need to monitor drug and medical testing centers, insurance agencies and emission testing centers, as these are the places where the fraud and falsification aspect of fixing usually happens, Amorando said. (KNR)
