EVERYWHERE you go in the Philippines, especially in schools and town halls, there is likely to be a statue of Dr. José Rizal, the country’s national hero.
Rizal strongly opposed Spain’s oppressive colonial rule in his time. He believed that the true nature of a good government is a moral, transparent and merit-based one that exists to educate, protect and empower its citizens to have a strong rule of law that has their consent.
He asserted that bad governments only existed because people allowed them to. In his view, citizens must actively participate in holding their leaders accountable rather than tolerating corruption.
During Rizal’s time, powerful landowning families aligned themselves with the Spanish colonial government and formed a wealthy and privileged class.
When the United States took the Philippines by force in 1898, it ignored what its assassinated president Abraham Lincoln once said — “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” — and the colonial regime it formed failed to provide a truly democratic government after granting independence to the country in July 1946.
The American colonial administrators may have set up a constitutional republic, but they institutionalized the power of landowning families by granting them the power to control local government offices, legislative seats and commercial interests. This effectively created a government ruled by an oligarchy in which corruption was — is — the norm and political power became the vehicle for self-enrichment and forming private business empires supported by the cronies in government, mostly lawmakers. That is what we have today.
This system of self-enrichment by politicians and their families at the expense of ordinary people is apparent in the current percentage breakdown of wealth. The top 10 percent of the country’s population of 117.72 million holds roughly P40 trillion, controlling nearly 73 percent of the nation’s total net worth, while the bottom 90 percent shares the remaining P15 trillion.
The dynastic political families make up the top 1 percent — roughly about 1.17 million individuals — and hold P17.9 trillion, which is three times more than the combined net worth of the bottom 50 percent of the entire population. The Philippines is home to 12,800 US-dollar millionaires and 15 US-dollar billionaires.
Scams
How they can accumulate such wealth is seen in the ongoing impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, flood-control corruption probes, and many other scams.
One of these scams is the so-called Pharmally scandal, in which billions of pesos in state supply contracts were awarded to a tiny company — a suspected front for corrupt politicians — to purchase grossly overpriced medical supplies for the government during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Another is the PhilHealth fund mismanagement scandal, which investigators exposed as a P15-billion syndication scam within the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. in 2020.
Bureau of Customs officials were accused in 2022 of allowing the large-scale smuggling of agricultural goods, electronic items and narcotics, most notably in 2017, when an estimated P11 billion worth of “crystal meth” concealed in magnetic lifters was allegedly allowed to pass through Customs.
In 2022 and 2023, the sugar importation scam was exposed after sugar authorities were accused of fabricating market scarcity to benefit pre-selected, favored traders and allowed 300,000 metric tons of sugar to be imported, which was detrimental to local production. These and many more have put the Philippines on the lowest rank of corrupt nations. (To be continued)/PN
