Six months after the inauguration of President Noynoy Aquino and on the occasion of International Anti-Corruption Day (December 9), Filipinos are beginning to ask what progress the government is making on its campaign promise to combat corruption and thus help eradicate poverty.

Six months on and the President’s personal ratings still remain very high – though they have dipped some since the heady days of May and June according to the latest Pulse Asia survey.

Sadly the Supreme Court ruling on the legality of the Truth Commission comes as no surprise.

We put ‘sadly’ not for the reasons that some might think – that many claim the Court to be biased against the Aquino government. It is ‘sad’ because it was perfectly clear back in May that any attempt to set up a commission which would only look at the alleged misdeeds of the Arroyo administration was a very poorly judged one. It suggested the move was much more about politics than it was about addressing the root of the problem of corruption in the Philippines.

Government officials, members of civil society organization workers, academic experts, business people and international development agencies met on Saturday November 20 in Pasig City to sign an agreement in a bid to make government budgets more open.

Without question, carrying the desires and expectations of a nation upon one’s shoulders is a huge burden and the challenge of combating corruption a Herculean task. Cynics might even claim it Sisyphean after the Corinthian king set the unavailing task of pushing an immense rock up a mountain for all eternity.

Yet whereas Hercules and Sisyphus labored alone, President Noynoy Aquino can call on a small army of secretaries, civil servants and advisers to help him. How useful they are in his quest of course depends partly on the level of leadership and quality of instructions given.  Finally, whereas the tasks set on Hercules and Sisyphus were purely physical, President Aquino has the harder challenge and is faced with changing traditions and patterns of behavior that are deeply rooted: For sure too, there are powerful vested interests which are working – perhaps even conspiring–  to hinder attempts to build a more transparent and accountable public sector.

“Events, dear boy, events” – British prime minister Harold MacMillan’s famous response to a question about the biggest challenge his government faced is probably well-understood and appreciated by President Noynoy Aquino now even if it wasn’t before as he looks back this week on his first 100 days in office.

For the past few months the Philippine Public Transparency and Reporting Project has been regularly meeting, discussing, developing and formalizing ideas and plans with a group of civil society organisations that have long been working to help improve the level of public transparency and accountability in government.

While much has been written about wang-wang since Wednesday’s inauguration, columnist Jarius Bondoc pinpoints the essential problem in today’s Philippine Star.

It is often said and only half in joke that no new music will ever better what has already been created: no new book or movie ever surpass the best of those already produced: So too many people the world over doubt any inaugural speech by a new president will ever match that given by John F Kennedy on January 20, 1961.

When Secretary Cesar Purisima took over the helm of the Department of Finance (DOF) in July last year, he conceded right away that it would not be an easy task.

It was like stepping on a treadmill, he said during his first days in office.

Now, one year on, the country’s fiscal health remains fragile –but improving.

The Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project (PPTRP) extends its congratulations and best wishes to Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III on being formally declared the winner of last month’s Presidential elections. As candidate he campaigned against corruption and poverty - and his plan to “restore trust in government” is neatly summarized in his “Social Contract with the Filipino People.”

The Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project (PPTRP) is helping to build a working group of civil society organizations active in anti-corruption programming to link with those in the new administration who are themselves aiming to improve greater transparency and accountability in the public sector.

Opinion is divided on the performance of the Aquino administration –with the business community and analysts giving it positive ratings while some social affairs think tanks and voters are concerned that campaign and other promises have yet to make any difference to the lives of the poor.

People are also divided over the government’s plans to pursue public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a key part of its economic planning.

Without doubt, signing the 2011 budget into law before January 1 was a major achievement for the Aquino administration. As many news organizations have pointed out, it was the first time in 11 years the budget was passed in time. This does away with the need to implement a re-enacted budget which is effectively a license to misappropriate huge amounts of public funds if a government is so-minded. As we know, a re-enacted budget is when no new budget has been passed in time and thus the previous year’s budget is adopted again as the basis for the coming year’s spending – this despite the fact that substantial amounts will have been budgeted and used for infrastructure, capital costs and other one-off completed projects which will not be needed again. Re-enacted budgets also fail to reflect increased costs such as those related to inflation and possible rising government liabilities such as increasing pension costs and servicing a larger public debt. Such budgets result in endless accounting problems and subvert all efforts to ensure real transparency and accountability. In doing away with the need for a re-enacted budget – for this year at least – the Aquino government has secured a substantial victory and his team deserves full credit for it.

Can we win the battle against fixers in government?

Fixers are found wherever rules and regulations governing business or the public sector appear overly bureaucratic and complex while proper oversight and control is poor. And wherever fixers are found, corruption is seldom very far behind.

In the first Doing Business Report published by the World Bank in 2008, the Philippines ranked 133 out of 178 countries in terms of ease of doing business. In 2009, the country slipped to 141st place. This year the country dropped another three to 144 out of 183 economies.

While he has been assiduous with all his senior appointments, President Benigno Aquino III was especially careful when it came to the person who would head up the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG).

It is after all the DILG which has to channel his transparency agenda from the national to the local level and down to the grassroots. Aquino essentially led the department himself for several weeks before designating former Naga City mayor Jesse Robredo as its chief.

The DILG has the Local Government Units (LGUs) as its main clientele. The LGUs are subdivided into 81 provinces, 136 cities, 1,495 municipalities and 42,008 barangays as of December 31, 2008.

President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III spent a major part of his first State of the Nation Address (SONA) revealing and denouncing how the previous administration allegedly squandered and depleted the public coffers.

Aquino said just halfway through the year, only PhP 100 billion (USD 2.2 billion) or 6.5 percent of the PhP 1.54 trillion (USD 34 billion) budget for 2010 could be used for the remaining six months. And with government expenditures exceeding revenues that means the budget deficit further widened to PhP 196.7 billion (USD 4.4 billion). “Inilihim at sadyang iniligaw ang sambayanan sa totoong kalagayan ng ating bansa (The reality was hidden from our people, who seem to have been deliberately obfuscated on the real state of our nation),” Aquino said.

News Analysis by Claire Delfin

With his campaign slogan “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap (When no one is corrupt, no one is poor),” Aquino vowed to lift Filipinos out of poverty by leading a graft-free government.

Millions of people are now poised waiting for the 15th President to deliver what he pledged during his campaign.

Just as with columnists in the mainstream media, bloggers are already poised over their keyboards ready to monitor and rate his performance: “He owes it to me and to the millions of voters out there the earnest fulfilment of his promises,” wrote Dine Racoma - one of countless citizens now using the Internet to follow the fortunes of the new administration.