45,000 govt officials need to be dismissed for a war vs corruption

DISMISSING that many officials, of course, would mean an upheaval in our society never before seen. But anything less won’t really amount to anything, since corruption is deeply rooted in our culture and embedded in our political-social structure. I’ll explain that figure in this column.

An April 25, 2025, article published online by Cambridge University Press by Marco Garrido pointed out that “the scholarly and popular commonsense about corruption in the Philippines [is that it] has always been corrupt. Seventy-eight years of corruption as an independent state (1946-2024) may as well have been a thousand.”

Garrido highlighted that since our independence, there has been a predictable cycle: corruption is uncovered, public outrage explodes, investigations dominate the headlines, and then the uproar fades with only a few convicted — and business as usual for the corrupt embedded deep in our bureaucracy.

From my anecdotal knowledge, those convicted are often those who run out of money to pay for expensive lawyers with connections to judges and even justices. A cottage industry of anti-corruption NGOs, funded by millions of dollars from American crusaders, has risen and fallen in the post-Marcos years. Media outlets financed by US deep-state entities, such as Rappler, PCIJ, and Vera Files, do so-called investigative journalism but never touch upon American activities to subvert our independence. About eight official anti-corruption bodies under the president, or as independent institutions, have been set up since our independence.

Remember Janet Napoles, the season’s villain behind the pork barrel scam exposed in 2013? This involved P10 billion in taxpayers’ money siphoned off to ghost NGO projects, facilitated by 192 legislators and 32 government officials, and civilians. After a year-long covert investigation by a special team from the Commission on Audit and six months of public congressional hearings, three senators, 23 congressmen, 20 agency officials, and a dozen fixers, including Napoles, were prosecuted.

Only eight of those involved have been convicted to this day — and no senator. Some convicted have appealed their cases to the Supreme Court.

Marcoleta

While Sen. Rodante Marcoleta is something else — a political dragon slayer — my bet is that the investigation into the flood-control scams will follow the 2013 pork-barrel trajectory. At some point, President Marcos may beg Congress to back down, as public works projects would grind to a halt.

Pork-barrel and flood-control scams are just the tip, the newest and boldest of the iceberg of Philippine corruption, and the scandal in these venues is that amateurs were bold enough to undertake graft so easy to pull off — and uncover. Word gets around that these scams are like grabbing candy from kids, and many rush in to join the looting. These criminals will simply invoke “force majeure” or the more poetic “acts of God” for not finishing flood-control projects. Graft at the Bureau of Customs and Internal Revenue remains the territory of elite criminals.

Former police chief Nicolas Torre has become the police force’s laughingstock, as he was either infinitely stupid — or puffed up with hubris — for letting slip through his fingers the usual P50 million a month police heads get from collections starting at the precinct level and moving up to his office. There is no evidence that the system of P50 million per month given to the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, plus a P50 million “pabaon” when he retires and taken from military discretionary or intelligence funds — exposed in 2011 by a whistleblower who was a former AFP budget officer — no longer exists.

Graft extends even to the judiciary. An LGU official charged with corruption lamented to me three years ago: “They get the money, and then later ask for more.” A former classmate, who came from a very poor family and joined the Ombudsman right after passing the bar, retired after just eight years with two huge houses. You can count on one hand the Cabinet members who didn’t get rich during their time in government. To paraphrase a famous quote from “Blade Runner”: “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe.” But, of course, I can’t prove it — nor do I have a death wish.

Starters

But that’s just for starters: As big as corruption is in national government offices, it’s just as widespread in the bureaucracy in 81 provinces, 148 cities, and 1,486 municipalities — ranging from petty bribes for business and sanitary permits to commissions in local infrastructure projects. Not so insidious is the practice of mayors’ relatives becoming “industrial” (i.e., no cash investment) partners in restaurants and other businesses.

What could be the scale of corruption in the Philippines? In Singapore, its first and now legendary prime minister Lee Kuan Yew’s Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau investigated 10,000 Singaporeans and convicted 3,500 — or just 0.2 percent of the island’s 1.5 million population — a small number but quite enough, especially with three Cabinet ministers prosecuted, to practically rid the country of corruption.

Hong Kong’s experience was similar in the 1970s. Its Independent Commission Against Corruption investigated 2,000 officers; 500 were dismissed out of the police force’s 29,000, or 1.7 percent, although “thousands” were granted amnesty.

The Chinese was more thorough. When Xi Jinping, now the paramount leader of China, became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, he launched the most intensive and extensive anti-corruption campaign the country has ever seen. About 1 million government employees and party members were dismissed — 2.5 percent of its 40 million civil servants, including six Politburo members whom many thought were his close comrades.

Xi

Xi’s successful anti-corruption campaign strengthened the party’s legitimacy and became a major factor in China’s spectacular growth this past decade, after its economic boom under Deng Xiaoping. Thus, Deng is to China’s economic growth as Xi is to the strengthening of the party and state resulting from his anti-corruption campaign.

If we use the 2.5 percent ratio from China’s bureaucracy, we would need to see 45,000 Philippine government employees out of the 1.8 million expelled for graft. That would mean a war — perhaps even more intense than former president Duterte’s historic war on drugs. Anything less, and any so-called anti-corruption campaign would be just a fart in the halls of Malacañang.

Undertaken over, say, three years — and provided with the large corps of investigators, prosecutors, and judges it would require, with competitive pay as was done in Singapore — ridding our country of corruption would be the breakthrough we’ve all been waiting for. If we can give the leadership of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, salaries of P4 million a month (for the governor) to P2 million for the second tier of leadership, to ensure inflation is controlled and corruption is reduced to zero, we can give the leaders of such an anti-corruption organization similar rates, or even just half.

This is not unrealistic. Remarkably, and a little-known fact, the dictator Marcos, after imposing one-man rule, expelled not only his enemies in Congress but also 2,400 officials and lower-level bureaucrats suspected of corruption — 0.5 percent of the bureaucracy in 1972.

But dreaming that this Marcos has the guts and moral standing to enact a momentous crackdown on corruption is preposterous. He seems to be terrified of grafters to even name the owners of the 15 companies he said had cornered 20 percent of the flood control costs, totaling P100 billion.

Our next president must emulate Xi’s precedent: strengthen the party and the state through a total war on corruption, and push China’s economy forward far enough to overtake the US hegemon economically and militarily.

Just this all-out war on corruption would be enough to win the next president a place in history, and our people’s enduring gratitude.

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45,000 govt officials need to be dismissed for a war vs corruption
Source: Breaking News PH