"Honest" Corruption and the "Dirty" Money
Posted on Monday, 30 June 2014
“Honest”
Corruption
And
the “Dirty” Money
By Apolinario Villlaobos
A congressman blatantly and seemingly with
authority declared that receiving money from Napoles is not bad, because it is
“her own”, from her bank account, not from any government account. Simply said,
only Napoles is guilty, not those whose palms she greased with money. If this
is how our lawmakers think, our country is really going to the dogs!
No wonder why, years before election, there
is a quandary in “raising funds” by politicians. After transferring these funds
to several bank accounts, they become “legally” theirs. That is how the
lawmaker was trying to say, exposing himself to the people, because it is part
of the plunder process in the Phlippines. It looks like, he knows the process
by heart. I wonder if he is also a high school graduate.
Corruption in the Philippines has sadly
become part of its political culture. A popular adage is that if one would want
to get rich instantly, he should join politics.
The People Power did little, if ever, to improve the lot of the people,
because only faces changed when Cory Aquino assumed the presidency. The same
corrupt attitude is still there, saturating the air of Senate, Congress, even
the Palace. The good thing that the People Power did was inspire other
countries, especially, Poland. It showed again, that the Philippines is only
good in initiating… there is no consistency in what we do.
Several elections were held, and always,
vote-buying was involved. The latest election showed the most scandalous vote
buying ever, but although apprehensions were made and cases filed in the
COMELEC, nothing came out of them. It is this indifferent attitude of concerned
agencies that embolden corrupt officials, and further cultivate the political
culture. Compared to a tree, it has grown robustly and become deeply rooted to
the ground.
People in the government see peso
opportunity in everything that they do. This embarrassing attitude has put the
image of the Filipinos in a bad light, even on the issue of donations. A
glaring situation is how billions of dollars of donations are being handled.
Foreign donors were shocked to learn that after many months, only fifty
relocation houses were built for the victims of typhoon Yolanda in Tacloban.
Even the rehabilitation czar himself, Ping Lacson, complains about the
indifference of two agencies that are supposed to be actively involved. This is
just the tip of iceberg, as they say, because nothing has been mentioned yet,
about sold donated goods, which concerned agencies, expectedly deny.
Discussion