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Saturday, September 25, 2004
Maxey: Bureau of Infernal Revenue, atbp.
By Ram Maxey
Bar None
MY LATE father used to jokingly call the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) the Bureau of Infernal Revenue. And he has been dead the past 47 years. It just goes to show how long ago yet this government agency has been regarded by the general public as a less than exemplary model of what a government bureau should be.
The BIR is one of the reasons the national treasury is bankrupt.
Not to be outdone, another government bureau that competes with the BIR for the "calabasa" award for being not only inutile but for being equally corrupt is the Bureau of Customs (BOC). The recent directive by President Arroyo to the BOC management to "shape up or ship out" is an affirmation of the bureau's corrupt ways.
GMA gave the BOC sixty days within which to cleanse its ranks of scalawags, prove its worth as a revenue-making entity by stopping smuggling and help in addressing the fiscal crisis the country is facing. Someone should tell President Gloria that many presidents before her had also given similar admonitions to past BOC administrations, but they all fell on deaf ears.
The Philippines has been called a "smuggling paradise" for as long as anyone cares to remember. Why, even when the country was self-sufficient in rice, rampant smuggling of this staple went on, thereby competing with locally-produced rice.
Smuggling, especially of rice, has proven to be highly lucrative for those involved in it because the operation itself, unlike legal forms of business enterprises, is devoid of competition. Add to that the fact that those involved in the smuggling network include not only corrupt BOC personnel but also military and police, both rank and file, as well as local politicians who have connections with other - and higher - politicians. Corruption in the Bureau of
Customs is a spider's web on a grand scale.
Like GMA's promise to create one million jobs a year for the country's huge unemployed workforce, her 60-day deadline to the Bureau of Customs to shape up or ship out is headed for failure. It just won't happen. Not in 60 days nor six months. Not even in six years, by which time her term shall have ended. If before that time she shall have managed to rid the bureau of its former scalawags, there is no guarantee that their replacements will not go the way of all flesh.
The temptation to make hay (while the sun shines) in the Bureau of Customs will - as in the past and present - prove to be overly irresistible in the future. As it has always been in the Bureau of Infernal Revenue (BIR) so shall it always be in the Bureau of Crooks (BOC). Deliverance won't come in our lifetime.
(September 25, 2004 issue)
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