The anti-corruption campaign of Philippine President Benigno Aquino III has led to the arrest of a string of top officials, including three senators, a former national police chief and even his predecessor.
However, a few prominent people who have been indicted have evaded jail time and are in no danger of imminent conviction. Some experts doubt Aquino’s campaign has had wider impact and question his effectiveness in tackling the scourge that has plagued the Southeast Asian nation for generations.
Although corruption remains entrenched, Aquino has made progress by several measures, improving the nation’s image among international investors.
The Philippines’ ranking in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report, which analyzes various factors, including corruption, rose to 47th out of 140 economies from 87th among 133 before Aquino took office in 2010. Corruption, previously the top problem, dropped to third behind an inefficient government bureaucracy and inadequate supply of infrastructure, it said.
In Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, a widely-used yardstick, the Philippines rose to 85th out of 175 nations last year from 134th place out of 178 in 2010.
Corruption cases against “high ranking officials and their cohorts” jumped from 189 in 2009 to 961 in 2013, the most in 18 years, according to Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, who prosecutes state employees and officials involved in graft. More than 400 more cases were filed last year.
“This president has walked his talk,” said Peter Angelo Perfecto, executive director of the Makati Business Club, an influential group of millionaire chief executive officers that has championed good corporate governance and clamping down on corruption.
Others say Aquino’s efforts are spotty and that he has failed to target many others by only going after his rivals.
Political analyst Ramon Casiple said Aquino’s campaign “hardly made a dent” because it targeted mainly high-profile opponents and held back on members of his own party, friends and associates.
Casiple praised the arrest of former Philippine Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile. He was one of three senators arrested on plunder charges for allegedly receiving huge kickbacks in a scam to divert hundreds of millions of pesos from state anti-poverty and development funds.
“That was really an accomplishment, but when [the arrests] stopped, that is when the questions came out,” he said.
Surveys show that while the web of corruption has shrunk some, it remains fairly common.
In a recent survey of business executives at nearly 1,000 companies, 32 percent of managers said they had personal knowledge of corrupt transactions with the government, down from 44 percent in 2007. The survey was done by independent pollster Social Weather Stations in face-to-face interviews.
The most “glaring hole” in Aquino’s anti-corruption drive is a lack of a strong push for a Freedom of Information legislation, which would have served as a good governance measure and a major institutional deterrent to graft by allowing the media and the public to “know how the government uses its finances,” Transparency and Accountability Network executive director Vincent Lazatin said.
“We are deluding ourselves if we think any of these reforms will take root in a single Aquino administration,” he added.
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