Lessons From Hong Kong
July 30th, 2003
Official corruption being one of the biggest causes of the country’s perpetual backwardness, we can only applaud the filing of graft charges against three Bureau of Internal Revenue and one Bureau of Customs officials by the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission.
All four of these officials failed a lifestyle check by their home department, the Department of Finance. (Part of the evidence was presumably in their offices’ parking lots, where ill-gotten wealth is proudly displayed in the form of Mercedes sedans and Toyota Prado SUVs.) The PAGC decision to file charges was followed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s declaring a campaign against corruption that she claimed would not spare high-ranking officials and even members of her own family, declaring corruption a threat to the country’s stability.
Mrs. Arroyo was referring to the escape of Indonesian bomb-maker Fathur Al-Ghozi, which is now widely regarded as the result of police corruption. Although that escape is still under investigation, it is becoming clearer by the day that it could not have happened without the collusion of corrupt, high-ranking police officials.
Mrs. Arroyo has made the usual noises of indignation and outrage, and named another committee to investigate. Embarrassed before the rest of the world by the police’s demonstration of its ineptness and the ease with which some of its officials and men were bribed, and having established its credentials as a reliable client of the United States through a proclaimed policy of relentless anti-terrorism, the Arroyo government needs to show the world—the Americans and the Australians specially—that it can throw a few PNP crooks out into the streets if not in jail.
But that may not be immediately forthcoming, or not at all, the police being, in its own perception, a major pillar of the Arroyo government’s support. It is even entirely possible for the entire episode to be swept under the rug as time works its wondrous amnesiac effects on Filipino memory, and we may never see any high-ranking PNP official on the dock for corruption.
Police corruption is only part of the deeply rooted culture of corruption in the Philippine government. Though most Filipinos are familiar with the fabled corruption in the BIR, Customs, the Department of Public Works and Highways, the Department of Education, etc., corruption has metastasized in every government agency whether national or local, and is far more than a threat to government stability.
Mrs. Arroyo’s emphasis on its destabilizing impact may be misplaced. Corruption is not so much destabilizing as it is a major obstacle to the development that has eluded the country for decades, and which has therefore kept millions of Filipinos poor and their lives short and brutal.
The BIR and Customs officials the PAGC has charged are big fish in their respective offices, but small fry in the larger hierarchy of the government as well as in terms of the amounts involved. They may not even be punished. The Arroyo government may only be focusing on corruption not only because the Al-Ghozi case has convinced it that corruption is a major factor in the government’s inability to contain terrorism, but also because the surveys say it’s regarded by most Filipinos as a failure in the anti-corruption department.
But it is a measure of the country’s desperate straits, as it frantically seeks the solutions to the problems that have doomed it to perennial poverty, that most Filipinos would welcome the littlest hint that all is not lost in the often declared, though seldom seriously fought, war against corruption.
They need to raise the bar higher. They must demand results in terms of jail time for grafters, whether from the police, the military or the civilian bureaucracy. They must demand that the corrupt forfeit their ill-gained assets, and that they be forever barred from public office. Beyond this, the citizenry also needs to raise its expectations of government high enough by demanding that government projects are implemented with only a minimum of corruption, or none.
Filipinos can learn from the experience of Hong Kong, which the Secretary General of Interpol hailed last January as “the anti-corruption capital” of the world during the Interpol Conference in New York.
Hong Kong is internationally recognized as one of the least corrupt places in the world, and has a reputation for having a government whose officials are least likely to extract bribes from individuals or organizations that deal with it. This reputation was validated in 1999, when Hong Kong was able to complete one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Asia, the US$20.6 billion (HK$160 billion) Airport Core Program (ACP), with hardly any corruption at all, according to the anti-corruption network Transparency International.
The new Hong Kong airport—which rivals the biggest airports in Europe in size, capacity and amenities—was the central project in the ACP, and was implemented by two government bodies. TI investigation in 1999 concluded that there the Project was completed within the budget and almost without corruption (only “very minor” incidents were recorded by TI.)
For his part, Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble attributed the success of Hong Kong’s anti-corruption campaign to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) and its three-pronged approach focused on investigation, prevention, and public education. ICAC, said Noble, was also administered by dedicated, professional and well-trained personnel.
And yet Hong Kong, before ICAC was established in 1974, had a different reputation. The police was regarded as “hopelessly corrupt and beyond repair from within” (TI). Police corruption was in fact one of the first targets of ICAC once it was created, succeeding, despite resistance and threats from the Hong Kong police, in prosecuting and jailing a number of high-ranking police officials.
Hong Kong’s commitment to the success of ICAC is evident in its staffing and its broad powers. ICAC consists of 1350 well-paid professionals, in contrast to the usual handful of staff members usually assigned to anti-corruption agencies in much of Asia. Among ICAC’s powers is the power to investigate on its initiative any alleged or suspected offense by government officials and employees. But it also has the power to arrest suspected grafters, search their homes and offices, and seize evidence.
ICAC is backed by the Prevention of Bribery Ordinance which contains a very broad prohibition against soliciting/ accepting, or giving/offering any bribe, gift, loan, employment, contract, favor or service in exchange for performing or not performing any official act.
It is at the outset a crime for any government employee to possess wealth and property not commensurate with his or her past or present official income, unless he or she can prove that the wealth was not ill-gotten—i.e., the employee has the burden of proving his innocence. Both givers and takers of bribes are also considered equally guilty, and can be punished with imprisonment for up to ten years plus a fine, confiscation of the unexplained assets, and a ban on holding public office.
The result has been what Interpol noted: a place virtually free of corruption, and where civil servants—who are incidentally paid some of the highest wages in Asia as an incentive against bribery—are not only generally honest but efficient.
The skeptical may say that while the Hong Kong experience in rooting out corruption has lessons for the Philippines, its success is premised on an official commitment at the highest levels to rid it of corruption. That determination our highest officials have yet to consistently demonstrate—and to demonstrate it with the kind of determination that in the late 1970s led to the prosecution and imprisonment of a number of high-level police officials in Hong Kong.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, July 26, 2003)