Ombudsman downplays Philippines ranking in ‘corruption survey’

December 14, 2006
Tetch Torres - INQ7.net

The Office of the Ombudsman has downplayed results of a survey by an international watchdog that placed the Philippines as the second most corrupt country in the Asia-Pacific region.

Assistant Ombudsman Mark E. Jalandoni said, "The Transparency International's Global Corruption Barometer 2006 is only based on perception."

Jalandoni said that the effectiveness of the country's anti-corruption efforts should be measured by the overall performance in the fight against corruption.

Records provided by the Ombudsman showed that from January to the present, the office has dismissed 78 people from the service and placed 17 others under preventive suspension.

Jalandoni said they had also filed cases against a total of 16 mayors and 2 governors before the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court.

Jalandoni said that even the international community has made positive responses to the government's anti-corruption effort.

He cited the US' $25-million grant to the Philippines under its Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) to finance the country's anti-corruption efforts. He said the MCA was an international aid program "to assist countries that have shown marked improvement in governance and anti-corruption efforts."

Jalandoni also noted that the country was recently delisted from the Financial Action Task Force's Black List of non-cooperative countries in the Fight Against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing.

Even Tony Kwok Man-wai, chief adviser on European Technical Assistance Team (ETAT) or the country's chief anti-corruption adviser, also felt strongly about the TI barometer.

"It is only based on mere perception and such surveys should not influence us for they always have a large margin of error and contradict each other."

The findings, shown in TI's Global Corruption Barometer 2006 survey, was released on December 7 and ranked the Philippines second in the Asia-Pacific region behind Indonesia (18 percent), followed by India (12 percent) and Thailand (10 percent), as among the corrupt states.

In the survey, 16 percent of respondents who have had transactions in the Philippines admitted to paying a bribe last year, while 84 percent said they did not.

Thirty-one percent said government actions against corruption were "not efficient," 24 percent said government "actually encouraged it," and 23 percent said government "did not fight it at all." Only 13 percent said government was "efficient" and only eight percent said it was "very efficient."

The police and the legislature were rated as the sectors most affected by corruption, followed by the revenue generating agencies and political parties.

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