The State of National Conscience

https://www.causes.com/campaigns/73915-help-samar-leyte-heal-rise-faster-prevent-corruption-now

Will President Aquino’s success in the pursuit of good governance, fight against corruption & rescue of institutions from total capture by a few top officials outlast his presidency?

Philippine Officials VS ISIL of Syria-Iraq: 
Year 2015 – Theft of At Least $4 Billion VS est $1.7 Billion Funds Raised?*

For its acknowledged unrivaled capability as a non-nation entity (yet), it is reported that it raises at least $5 million every day from illegitimate and allegedly criminal activities on top of the suspected support from foreign governments and private donors.*

Yet at est $1.7 billion (US dollars) – the amount it will raise this year will be eclipsed by the amount of development and other funds that will be stolen this year in the Philippines – a plausible bare minimum of $4-6 billion this 2015, what should be considered an election year here, as the next national and local elections will be in May 2016. 

There is a 100% occurrence of mass vote-buying across all contests in all levels and in all political subdivisions in the country.

More than 70% of the elective posts are captured by political dynasties. I computed a very low estimate of 7% of the roughly $60 billion 2015 national budget. Poverty caused, exacerbated and perpetuated by severe corruption in the Philippines indirectly kill so many thousands every year.

The difference is that ISIL will spend the money for, among others, its causes, for its operations and for the families of their fighters who died. The Philippine officials will pocket the money, dump it to their dummies / dummy companies and launder some of it and use not more than 20% of their loots to buy votes in May 2016.

The decades that political dynasties ruled their domains in the Philippines saw the theft and misuse of billions of dollars of funds intended for basic social services and development projects and programs – not less than $50 billion (in current average peso-dollar exchange rate) in the last 2 ½ decades, eclipsing the total amount allegedly stolen by the Marcos family in a 2-decade rule. The national government disbursed more than $500 billion in that period, and I estimated a ridiculously-low 10% kickbacks derived from spending or outright theft of the funds through highly inventive, creative and adaptive methods that skirt the anti-corruption laws & rules of accountability in this country.

Who will make a better President: Roxas, Duterte, Jinggoy Estrada, Poe or Binay?

Any one of them can be the next transformational leader that the Filipinos have always dreamed of, their track record and past deeds notwithstanding because in the Philippines even a rare illustrious record of public service is a not a good predictor of future performance.

President Aquino was portrayed by his opponents in the 2010 election as lacking in experience, without notable achievements and without a distinguished career in public service – yet he has achieved exceptional success in his (administration’s) pursuit of good governance and fight against corruption, in spite of strong resistance from dynastic political families most of them aren’t toeing the President’s “Straight Path” even after migrating to the Liberal Party to escape accountability for their past and on-going acts. The accolades from the international institutions are with evident merits. The sweet thing about him that the masses & nearly all segments & sectors of our society, it turned out, was the honesty that he had & the lack of lust for power - oh so rare in this country among the public officials.

Yet some leading public officials here with brilliant academic credentials and excellent track record in public service ended up accused of mass murders, massacre, theft of colossal amounts of public funds and a myriad of blatant acts of abuses of power. And that include the very acts that continue to weaken our society, increase the likelihood of an explosion of violence, social unrest & political instability. I have the authority to say that even our exercises of the fragile democracy that we have are undermined – and in this case once again I say we can’t just say it here without further risking our endangered persons.

A Phenomenon in the Philippine Governance

In this country, an efficient functioning of a local government unit (village, town, city, and province) even with comparably impressive quality of the basic social services, other public services and infrastructure projects is not a good indicator of the overall quality of governance and quality of life of the majority of the people. Even in some places where local government units are led by rather popular public officials who were given numerous awards and citations for the quality of a component of its governance or for its impactful projects – monstrous corruption and criminality can be thriving.

One Mayor in a remote local government unit (our security precaution – that we don’t declare places) has a reputation for being tough on crimes – petty crimes only, it turned out. A billboard in a major public place even advertises the rewards of up to 50,000 pesos (roughly $1,200) for tipsters. Yet right under his nose serious crimes are going on – and the place is mired in widespread poverty and despair among the poor, despite the place having one of the biggest per-capita LGU budget in the country and vast natural resources being tapped.

This is a place where you invite murder if you ever speak publicly against the officials – and people are left with no choice but to bait the hook of vote-buying money every election, a practice (3 years) that steals their chances to rise from poverty and that limit the present and future opportunities for their children to break from the vicious cycle of poverty. They get breadcrumbs in exchange for their future and quality of life, even safety in times of calamities and viable choices in times of family emergencies.

There was a colossal global response in the aftermath of the devastation caused by the tropical supertyphoon Yolanda (“Haiyan”) – in places where colossal amounts of public funds were stolen over the decades by the political dynasties that ruled most of the political domains there. Severe corruption caused unnecessary or preventable deaths and devastation to a million families whose entanglement in poverty caused them to be very vulnerable to destructive forces of nature. 

No one can blame them, the poor who sell their votes as their trust have been endlessly betrayed, their hopes crushed and what with their dire economic and social circumstances as they struggle to survive in a more and more competitive environment with less and less natural resources.

An Economy on the Rise In Spite of Massive Corruption Still Pervading in Most Local Government Units

The average growth rate of the Philippine economy from 1998-2010 is one of the highest in the developing world. And that was in spite of the pervasive and massive wholesale-theft of government funds in most of those years. Imagine where we are now were former President Arroyo not held captive by the interests of those who helped catapult and kept her in power, the extent of wholesale theft of government funds during her administration now only beginning to unravel is nauseating even to us who are rather inured to rampant, blatant corruption in our society.

Immense social problems that include the world’s highest inequality in income and control of wealth between the top 90 richest families and the bottom 90% of the population will persist for some time not because Aquino fell short in any measure of governance to address such but because we are so deep and so overwhelmingly engulfed in these problems over the decades that even the exceptional success of his government pales in the gargantuan scales of the socioeconomic and governance problems that needed to be addressed.

That we are still so far behind in many key measures of competitiveness even among our neighbors in Southeast Asia demonstrates how far behind when Aquino started his drive for this country to start to catch up.

Our Latest International Campaign

We call on local public officials to restrain their greed this 2015. We urge them to limit their demand or accepted percentage of the budget for projects to only half of what they used to get. It will have a phenomenal effect on your conscience and relationship with God. You will again take pride in your posts rather than constantly think people especially your constituents think or speak of you as monstrous crocodiles, behind your backs.

The Filipino diaspora will never stop unless the civil society get their acts together to exert consistent pressure on itself to stop its complicity to these atrocious acts of corruption that kill entire families and kill the hopes of millions in this country. Where is the conscience of our public officials? Is this what we have to show for being one of the 10 biggest democracies in the world, the only major Christian nation in Asia, one of the world’s biggest Catholic-majority nations and with what we ridiculously claim as one of the freest societies in the world? Do you really feel proud about your country you abandon for good reasons?

If only... If only we have the freedom to speak freely... If only many more Filipinos care more about their country more than taking for granted the beauty of the free and prosperous societies that generations of other peoples in other countries labored so hard and shed endless tears and sweat with to create the fruits that Filipinos covet and desire to partake of. If only the local religious leaders not only disassociate from but actively condemn the likes of what Pope Francis excommunicated. It’s all so revolting & horrible – we nurture monsters who are killing us softly. In this country, we have created and sustain social storms that wreak more long-term havoc and cause more deaths in our society than all the typhoons who made a favorite of our country, year after year.

(for editing and revisions)

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*We did not intend to provide accurate official figures in this blog entry, instead we thought of demonstrating the scale of corruption relative to what our foreign readers can better relate to as to having a better grasp of the atrocity of acts of corruption by severely corrupt local officials in the Philippines.