|
 What could be done: Anti-corruption expert Tony Kwok says everybody has a role in fighting corruption and that it all starts with political will at the top. RORIE FAJARDO Corruption has absolutely nothing to do with culture and everything to do with political and personal will.
Those who point to traditions and history are simply making the poorest of excuses and are in basic denial by simply refusing to accept personal and collective responsibility for the state they are in.
So says one of the world’s leading anti-corruption experts -- Tony Kwok, who spoke at a public forum on Friday at Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City. As proof, the former Deputy Head of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) in Hong Kong pointed to the overarching Chinese culture and Confucian traditions in his home town which transformed itself from being one of the most corrupt societies to one of the cleanest.
“We love money and wealth creation and the family to us is everything – but the secret is zero tolerance for corruption.”
The charismatic Kwok took delight in challenging those in the audience who imagined it would take decades for the Philippines to rid itself of the legacy of generations of graft.
In Hong Kong, he reminded people, it took just three years.
The Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project has previously cited the leading and very instructive example of Tony Kwok and his Hong Kong colleagues in combating corruption – and it may be found here.
As the Philippines is today, Hong Kong was very much a by-word for corruption and graft during the dark days of the 1960s and early 1970s when it was a British colony and when everything and everybody was seemingly for sale.
Public hospital patients famously could not even get their bedpans emptied without promising ‘tea’ or bribe money to the nurses, while most taxis carried stickers in their windshields to show they had already ‘paid off’ the police to stop them being summarily stopped and ‘shaken down.’
It took a step change in thinking and approach lead by the then governor of Hong Kong and a lot of people were sacked and upset by the new measures and changes introduced.
But those in charge kept their nerve and saw the dramatic changes through.
The experience of growing up in Hong Kong and working for the ICAC for 27 years before his retirement in 2002 has helped framed Kwok’s perspective: Since then he has been working as an international consultant, teacher and advisor working in over 15 countries and is a member of the UN Anti-Corruption Expert Group on Corruption.
Kwok also reminded the audience he had been to the Philippines many times before and had even been called in previously by Malacanang Palace to advise on anti-corruption measures.
Political will
In 2005 he was invited to help the government of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo combat corruption. A New York Times article at the time stated that Filipinos “like most other people, do not generally take kindly to outsiders telling them what is wrong with them. So it was a bit of a surprise when almost no one here complained that a former official from Hong Kong had been advising the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on how to combat corruption in the Philippines.
“According to officials and experts, the appointment of Tony Kwok to oversee the government's anti-corruption campaign in the next three years demonstrates the seriousness of the problem.”
And yet, as Kwok reminded and showed his audience in Quezon City on Friday through graphs and charts citing reliable public opinion surveys, “all presidents of the Philippines enjoy high confidence about combating corruption at the beginning.”
The election of the past four presidents (since the period of Cory Aquino) provided a “golden opportunity” when public confidence was high. But in each case, confidence subsequently collapsed. Public confidence and political credibility, he said was one of several key factors in ensuring a successful anti-corruption strategy and result.
Political will is crucial, he insisted. “All Philippine presidents have made statements and promises about corruption, but the follow-through has been missing.”
He indicated that it was crucial for administrations to move behind the hyperbole and turn statements and promises into action. The Philippines he said enjoys some of the strongest and best laws against corruption – and yet it fell down on implementation. The Philippine law on public procurement was a perfect case in point: It was one of the best laws in the world.
And yet, Kwok said: “System and laws are not enough – it is all about enforcement.”
He demonstrated that while many South East Asian countries had their own statutory anti-corruption commissions and groups, many fell down and have proved failures when it came to implementation.
Such failures, Kwok argued, were down to such things as a lack of resources; lack of independence; the wrong strategy; inadequate laws; inadequate jurisdiction; lack of credibility and support; lack of any coalition of support; a corrupt judiciary; a lack of professional staff and a lack of public accountability and political will.
He pointed out that here in the Philippines it took on average 12 years for a corruption case to be decided in court.
And one of his recommendations for the Philippines was for an overall plan that would allow the judiciary to solve up to 90 per cent of corruption allegations and cases within 12 months.
It would, he acknowledged, among other things, require a real plan for judicial reform.
Funding anti-corruption
Kwok recalled how in one two-day retreat organized by Malacanang Palace by the previous administration that he had led, many departmental heads had insisted it was not their responsibility to address corruption but that of the Office of the Ombudsman. That, he suggested, was indicative of a total failure to understand the nature of both corruption and of joint responsibility. Each department, he insists, must acknowledge the role it must play and develop its own annual plan to combat corruption.
Everybody, he said, is responsible.
In a subsequent interview with the Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project, he reiterated his views on those who claim the Philippines should be deemed a special case given its culture.
“I have no time for that argument and I say it all the time. “
And while many need no convincing, Kwok also made a very clear case linking economic performance to corruption.
“If you want economic growth you really need to fight corruption. Foreign investment is simply not comfortable going into countries where there is high corruption. When it comes to foreign investment, Hong Kong is very popular and the Philippines far less so. Why? Simply there is no level playing field here and foreign investment needs a level playing field. The first aspect to that is the [public] budget. If you have a good control on corruption, you have good control and input into the budget. In the Philippines you have 20-30 per cent of the public budget lost to corruption. In Hong Kong that money goes to things like public housing – the benefits are clearly obvious.”
He agreed that a step change approach here was necessary – one of these being to ensure sufficient funds being allocated to anti-corruption efforts in the Philippines.
In Hong Kong, he reminded people, the independent commission had 900 investigators to 180,000 civil servants. In the Philippines, the Ombudsman had 200 investigators to more than 1.8 million civil servants. “Even if there are only one per cent corrupt civil servants that is one investigator to 18,000 civil servants – and that is not enough.”
The Philippine government he said has to get serious about funding anti-corruption efforts.
“For it to say that we are ‘a poor country’ and we cannot afford it is just not enough. The Philippines loses a minimum of 20 per cent to corruption – and so are we really saying we cannot afford to spend 0.3 per cent of the budget on anti corruption measures? That just doesn’t make sense.”
Tony Kwok finally listed some of his suggestions as to how the Philippines could seriously move forward in its battle against corruption.
These include:
Appoint the right Ombudsman
Set aside 0.3 per cent of the national budget for anti corruption
Congress and Senate to speed up passing anti-corruption friendly laws
Build up the accountability system of the Ombudsman
Judiciary reform – a service guarantee to conclude 90 per cent of corruption cases within 12 months
Government agencies annual action plan
Resurrect Solana Covenant (where the Commission on Audit, the Civil Service Commission and the Ombudsman vow to work in true partnership). Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project
|
PPTRP holds 10th budget reporting training in Bohol June 30
PPTRP holds 9th budget transparency reporting training in Kidapawan City June 6
PPTRP-supported Local Transparency Groups Share Experiences in Reporting, Fighting Corruption
PPTRP holds 7th budget reporting training in Davao City May 27
PPTRP holds 6th budget transparency reporting in Dipolog City May 23
PPTRP meets with editors and columnists May 18 to discuss media coverage of public corruption
PPTRP meets NBN ZTE scam whistle blower Rodolfo Lozada May 9
PPTRP holds 5th budget reporting training in Ozamiz City April 26
PPTRP holds 4th training on budget reporting in CDO April 2
What's wrong with these photos (apart from the blocked out bits)? 
Comments
SO EMBARASSING
RSS feed for comments to this post