Malacañang officials said they are taking the results of the Transparency International (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index 2017 “seriously” and underscored that “corruption is a problem that cannot be solved overnight.”
In the latest corruption index results reported by Transparency International, the Philippines slipped 10 notches to 111th place among 180 countries.
The country ranked 101st out of 176 nations in 2016, and 95th of 168 countries in 2015.
Presidential Spokesman Harry L. Roque Jr. reiterated the government’s efforts to curb corruption.
“President Duterte, likewise, gave a stern warning to government officials and employees that he would not tolerate corruption during his watch,” Roque said. “The Chief Executive fired many government officials, including members of the Cabinet, once he heard even a whiff of corruption. He, likewise, issued Executive Order [EO] 43 creating the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission and opened a citizens’ complaint hot line 8888.”
But Roque noted that the government could not fight corruption alone.
The Palace then urged citizens to be vigilant and report any form of corruption.
The index, which ranks countries and territories by their perceived levels of public-sector corruption according to experts and business people, uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
The country’s latest index score is 34, lower than last year’s 35.
The Philippines also placed at the bottom end of the spectrum for the Asia-Pacific region, placing 21st out of 31 countries.
This year New Zealand and Denmark rank highest with scores of 89 and 88, respectively, while Syria, South Sudan and Somalia rank lowest with scores of 14, 12 and 9, respectively.
Western Europe was named as the best-performing region with an average score of 66, while Sub-Saharan Africa (average score 32), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (average score 34) were the worst- performing regions.
Roque also pointed out that TI factored in the protection of the press and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in its ranking.
In its regional analysis for countries in Asia Pacific, the group concluded that corruption in many countries is still strong, and even listed the Philippines as among the “worst regional offenders” for scoring “high for corruption” and having “fewer press freedoms and higher number of journalist deaths.”
Transparency International analysis also showed that the countries with the least protection for mass media and NGOs also tend to have the worst rates of corruption.
The analysis also incorporated data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which showed that more than nine out of 10 journalists were killed in countries that score 45 or less on the index.
Data from CPJ showed that a total of 79 journalists in the Philippines were killed from 1992 and 2018.
“Transparency International even cited that every week at least one journalist is killed in a country that is highly corrupt, which is not the case in the Philippines,” Roque said.
He also pointed out that there is “no truth” that the country have fewer press freedom as what TI claimed in their report.
“Our media are still able to broadcast and print or publish what they want—fake news included. Filipinos are free to air their grievances with the President even declaring an unprecedented Day of Protest,” he said, adding that President Duterte has acted swiftly with the creation of the Presidential Task Force on Media Security to ensure the protection of media practitioners.
He also said that all murder cases involving journalists during the Duterte administration “have already been solved,” according to the record of the Task Force.
“In addition, public officials who threatened media workers have been ‘red-flagged’ to show that we work without fear or favor,” he said.
Dr. Ronald U. Mendoza, dean of the School of Government of the Ateneo de Manila University, agrees with the report that the state of the anticorruption efforts in the Philippines appears to have either “stalled or deteriorated.”
“The reasons have to do with several high-profile corruption cases under the Duterte administration that were poorly resolved,” Mendoza said in an e-mail sent to the BusinessMirror. “Some of the corruption cases stem from the apparent abuse by some elements in the Philippine National Police of the government’s strong-handed antidrugs campaign. This policy is in danger of spawning impunity among corrupt agents of the state. For instance, recently there have been some ‘tokhang-for-ransom’ practices exposed by media.”
Mendoza cited the case of South Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo in late-2016 and the exposed extortion of some alleged drug suspects and their detention in a secret jail cell in a Manila precinct.
“The detainees alleged that the police asked for bribes for their release,” he said.
He added that the government’s antidrug war does not seem to have made a dent on the supply of illegal drugs from countries like China.
He said the government’s anti-drugs agency exposed a P6.4-billion shabu smuggling in May 2017, “but the Department of Justice [DOJ] later dropped the smuggling charges against those officials and private-sector entities concerned.”
This month, the DOJ refiled in the Regional Trial Court in Manila (RTC) the drug-smuggling case against alleged Customs fixer Mark Taguba and 11 others, including two foreigners and three John Does.
Although Mendoza lauded the improvement in the country’s open index performance reported early in 2018, which tracks how open the budgeting process is, Mendoza said overall the Duterte administration has not yet emphasized any systematic effort to curb corruption.
“Even the initial positive signal sent by EO 2 on Freedom of Information [FOI] has not yet been followed up with a strong push for legislating FOI. The exceptions in EO 2 are also quite critical—Congress and the local government units are not included in EO 2, for example,” he said, referring to EO 2 signed by the President in 2016.
“One hopes the President goes beyond efforts to appoint new people in key agencies; and he, instead, pushes for deep institutional reforms that help to combat corruption even beyond his term,” he added.
TI also called on the global community to take action to curb corruption.
The group suggested the following steps: governments and businesses must do more to encourage free speech, independent media, political dissent and an open and engaged civil society.
Governments should also minimize media regulations and ensure that journalists can work without fear of repression or violence; civil society and governments should promote laws that focus on access to information.
It added that activists and governments should take advantage of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to advocate and push for reforms at the national and international levels, and that governments and businesses should disclose relevant public-interest information, including budgets, company ownership, public procurement and political-party finances in data formats.