Leaning back in his Philippine government-issued swivel chair, Tony Kwok Wan-mai (郭文緯) ponders the question for a few seconds.
Hands clasped, he leans forward and almost in a whisper says: "So, some people think fighting corruption in the Philippines is like being handed a poisoned chalice, do they? Well, I guess they haven't been to Nigeria then."
His dry sense of humor breaks the ice and he begins to relax, sipping Chinese tea.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
With eyeglasses and casually dressed in an open-neck shirt and sports jacket, he looks more like an academic than a leading Asian crime fighter. But that's the way the 58-year-old former deputy commissioner and head of operations for Hong Kong's Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) likes it.
Appointed in May by Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to be her special adviser on anti-corruption, Kwok is under no illusion about the job ahead of him in a country where corruption is viewed as a low-risk, high-return crime.
The UN Development Program last year estimated that US$1.8 billion, about 13 percent of the country's annual budget, is lost to corruption every year.
A similar figure came from the World Bank in a study five years ago. It estimated that between 1980 and 2000 the Philippines lost US$48 billion due to graft.
US investment bank Morgan Stanley calculated that the country had been milked of US$204 billion between 1965, when the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos came to power and institutionalized corruption, and 2001.
It was known then as "crony capitalism," limited largely to Marcos and his associates. Now, corruption has spread to every aspect of life.
Most companies put aside 22 percent of the cost of a government project just to pay bribes, a survey by the Social Weather Stations polling group found after questioning 700 managers across the country.
Arroyo declared war on corruption when she appointed Kwok, saying: "The winds of change are blowing in the Philippines."
She says she is confident that, with Kwok's help, she can win the battle within the next three to four years.
Yet Arroyo herself is facing impeachment over claims that she cheated in last year's presidential election, and that members of her immediate family have been taking bribes from organizers of an illegal gambling racket.
Kwok's war room is a sparsely furnished, windowless office tucked away on the ground floor of the Office of the Ombudsman in Manila's Quezon City district.
With its cream walls and bright ceiling lights it looks more like an interrogation room than an office dedicated to fighting graft. It is a far cry from the plush surroundings he had grown accustomed to during his days with the ICAC in Hong Kong.
Even the Office of the Ombudsman building, an austere-looking three-story pink structure with white trim and grand columns, looks strangely out of place surrounded by shabby squatter camps. But as far as Kwok is concerned, surroundings are not important. It is the "war" effort that counts.
Hong Kong's war on corruption in the 1960s and 1970s lasted seven years, he says. That fight had the will of the British colonial administration, a newly formed ICAC and a legal system free to prosecute and bring convictions.
Kwok says the Philippines should not be any different.
"Hong Kong is the textbook example of what can be done in the fight against corruption. It's not easy but it can be done," he said. "There is no shortage of political will to fight corruption here in the Philippines. From the president down to her Cabinet ministers and heads of government departments, you have the will. Ordinary Filipinos are fed up with it as well."
Kwok speaks with an almost evangelical enthusiasm for his mission, but others fear he is doomed to fail.
"Comparing the Philippines to Hong Kong is just ludicrous," one diplomat said. "Hong Kong was ruled by the British and had the rule of law. What do you have here? You have a group of rich families and vested interests looking after one another ... Everyone is on the take and that's just the way it is."
Kwok concedes that political will alone is not enough to fight corruption.
"You must have a legal system that is prepared to take the cases on, process them quickly and see that wrongdoers are jailed," he says. "There has been no prominent person jailed for corruption in this country, not one."
Even in Indonesia, which a survey of foreign businessmen ranked as the most corrupt country in Asia after the Philippines, top officials have been charged and jailed on graft charges. The head of the country's election commission was recently charged, a former trade minister just began a jail term and the governor of Aceh province was hauled from his hospital bed to serve a 10-year sentence for corruption.
A study by the Philippine Supreme Court found that it takes almost seven years for a case to go through the Sandiganbayan, the country's anti-graft court.
"That's got to be some kind of world record," Kwok says.
For Kwok, used to the efficiency of the Hong Kong legal system in which most corruption cases are dealt with in a year or less, the Philippine legal system will be his biggest obstacle to ending payoffs and kickbacks.
"Unless you have an efficient court system where corruption cases can be tried and dealt with easily and corrupt people sentenced promptly, it makes the war on corruption difficult to fight ... very difficult," he says.
Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo, with whom Kwok works closely, sees the country's legal system as hindering their efforts.
There are moves in Congress to improve the efficiency of the anti-graft court, where there is said to be a backlog of about 10,000 cases going back decades and only 15 justices to hear them.
Most people brought before the court escape conviction.
"This country may be bad but you should have been in Hong Kong during the 1960s and 70s ... the place was rotten from top to bottom," he says.
A customs officer since 1966, Kwok had a front-row seat on the payoffs plague that had broken out in the colony. No ordinary lawman, he wanted to fight corruption and found the customs service too restrictive.
ICAC offered a bigger challenge, and the right outlet for his passion to fight the crime. It was staffed mostly with former policemen from Britain, but Kwok joined in 1975 as one of the few local Chinese recruits.
His ability and dedication to the job saw him stand out and he quickly rose through the ranks to become in 1996 the first local ICAC officer to be appointed deputy commissioner and head of operations.
It was a time of massive change in the colony.
"The government, while maintaining social order, delivered the bare essentials but could not satisfy the insatiable needs of the colony's exploding population," he says. "It opened the door to corruption at all levels where people obtained the things they needed through the back door. Corruption became an accepted fact of life."
Police turned a blind eye to crimes such as drugs and gambling.
"The whole social fabric had started to fall apart, when the public said: `Enough is enough,'" he says. "The colonial administration declared war on corruption. It was just like a scene out of that American television show The Untouchables where Eliot Ness took on the country's biggest gangster, Al Capone."
The years of crimefighting do not seem to have taken their toll on Kwok. He does not look like a man in his late 50s, though his short black hair has a slight touch of gray. Playing squash keeps him fit, and he is also a keen scuba diver.
He found time to raise his daughters but for Kwok, who retired in 2002, the ICAC was not just a job.
"I saw it as my mission in life," he says.
He finds the Philippines a challenge, but not an impossible one.
"When the president asked for my help, she said: `Tony, where do we start?'" he recalls. "I simply told her you have to be serious about wanting to fight corruption, and the anti-corruption agencies, such as the Office of the Ombudsman, must have the tools to fight."
"The anti-corruption court has to be strengthened to process and convict graft cases," he adds.
Already, with the help of US$3.7 million in funding from the EU, he has established an anti-corruption drive in 16 key government offices.
Kwok says the fight against corruption in the Philippines will be based on a three-pronged campaign -- prevention, education and deterrence.
"The Ombudsman is totally independent here, more so than in Hong Kong. The government recently put more resources into the Office of the Ombudsman that is the front line in the corruption fight in this country," he says. "By the end of next year the number of investigators will have grown from a handful to 200. That is real progress."
It is at least a start. And Kwok, the passionate crime fighter, believes it will not be the end.
"Nothing is impossible," he says.
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