Wednesday, March 21, 2007 Ledesma: Seeking election to escape conviction By Jun Ledesma Sunbursts
SO, WE are in the bottom -- rather on the top of the list of the most corrupt economies in Asia. The opposition of course makes this attribute a campaign issue without first looking at themselves in the mirror.
We denigrate the administration and the bureaucracy forgetting that we are as equally guilty for abetting the corruption that pervades not only in the bureaucracy and the halls of Congress but in private corporate offices down to the ghettos, slums and farms.
Let me start from the bottom. I distinctly remember how, during the early days of pre-martial regime of Marcos, when the government had wanted to alleviate the plight of the farmers. The Department of Agriculture came out with a program known as "Masagana 99." The program partakes of a non-collateralized soft loan to farmer-beneficiaries. What happened was a disaster. The repayment performance was less than 50% of the total number of farmers who availed themselves of the soft loan! The farmers who gypped the government even tagged the program as "kami masagana, ang gobyerno 99." And the farmers laughed at it without realizing they deliberately kill what could have made other farmers live.
In Davao City, the late Arcel Fuentes, helped seven jeepney drivers get to have their own jeeps without a single centavo out from their pockets. Arcel touched base with a religious foundation who agreed to front-end the total cost of the units. Because they were supposed to be "marginalized" poor and perceived to be honest and men of integrity, the trusting Arcel and the Foundation she sought for help had the jeeps registered directly in the names of the drivers. They were just supposed to pay half of the usual "boundary" so that at the end of the period another set of seven jeepney drivers will again be helped by the Foundation. After the lapse of barely six months, the drivers, on the advice of a lawyer, stopped paying the Foundation. The lawyer told them that they owned the unit, so why pay the Foundation? The lawyer said that he can face Arcel and the Foundation in any Court. Arcel was so disillusioned she told me "being poor 'pala' does not connote honesty and integrity." She said "some poor becomes one because he or she wants to have everything the easy way and the easy way is to cheat and to steal."
My first serious job was that of a sales manager in a steel equipment firm in Manila. Our company won the bidding in the Bureau of Supply and we are to sell to all government agencies everything that they issue purchase orders for. I was barely five days old with the firm and never had any inkling on the nuances of government transactions. When the winning bidder was announced, supply officers from various government offices were paying homage to my boss. Since I was with Sales it was my duty to attend to them. To my shock everybody expected to have 10% KB (kickback)! I complained to my boss who empathized with me for my innocence and stupidity. Now let me tell you this. All the purchasing officers of all government offices in what is now Metro Manila, demanded KBs. There is only one exception though, and I can never forget his name, Mr. Panes of the Philippine Virginia Tobacco Administration. He is impeccably honest.
Deal with not a few private firms today and you run into some bilking employees and bosses who will demand from you a share of your sales profit.
And why do you think some senatoriable candidates scramble for the senate seat? Have you ever wondered why the closest of kin want to have a grab in the senate? Each one has a P200-million pork barrel per year. For each committee chairmanship, I was told, a senator gets to receive P500,000 more. Now imagine if there are two or three of you in the family getting a seat and chairmanships in the senate with all the perks courtesy of the Juan dela Cruz taxes. If you think they are there for the service to humanity then you must have imbibed a can-full of shabu. And boy, how they can berate Malacañang!
The Philippines in the apogee of corruption? Why resent that? But if you think the expats who were interviewed to rate the RPs sick bureaucracy are clean, think again. They are as corrupt as their victims. You think those foreign firms doing business in the Philippines giving us a just share? Let's not go far. Cavendish banana traders, foreign nationals they are, buy our bananas for a pecayune. They sell the same banana in their markets at a price almost a hundred fold over. This may not be corruption by definition of the word but this is diabolic and greed. Why does the US of A give preferential trade with some countries and slap others with higher tariffs? Because they want controls and that to me is corruption in the highest order. Corruption is curable although like addiction it will take a little time to rehab. But greed and satanism? They stay for as long as the devil himself is alive.
No one can come out clean from this magma of corruptive influences that's all around us. It's election season. Watch for those who run and are in dire compulsion to get elected. If you think they want to serve you think again. They want to get elected to save themselves from conviction. Not a few of incumbent and past government officials who are facing serious charges of corruption are, or will be, fighting tooth and nail to get elected. See how elected officials indicted by the Ombudsman for graft are given absolute liberty by the courts once they are suspended. We sneer at Ombudsman Merceditas Guttierez for not doing her job well enough and fast enough. But how can she move on when each time she indicts the culprit the courts lifts the suspension. Our courts have been suspect and that is sad. But what is saddest is when those indicted gets elected and then escape conviction.
