(Editor's note: Repeated delays in the prosecution of graft cases encourage more corruption in public office as noted by the author.)

Government officials and employees with the natural inclination to steal public fund calculate that penalties may not reach them in 10, 15, or 20 years of prosecution, trial, and appeal.

Long prosecution

We often read about anti-graft cases finally decided after the death of the accused – elective officials, town treasurers/cashiers, councilors, and elective provincial officials. Prison terms of 10 , 15, or 40 years don’t affect dead persons, and recovering what was stolen, say P10 M or P15 M, was out of the question. How could big sums remain unspent through the years?

With luck

In one year, if probers are lucky, some three or four final judgments are published about small-time grafters who falsified payrolls and checks, “accepted” ghost delivery of office supplies, etc.

Their bosses who barked orders – always not documented – played possum watching the progress of prosecution up to final judgment. With few exceptions, big-name crooks escape the small dragnet cast by graft investigators.

‘Extra savings’

How extensive is the campaign against corruption in such agencies as DPWH, BIR, BoC, PCGG, SEC, etc.? There are ad hoc commissions handling or pursuing leads against four or five grafters after amassing a vast fortune in 10 or 20 years of “saving” extra earnings in bribes.

There are hundreds or even thousands of contractors dealing with various departments in endless contracts to build roads, bridges, irrigation, schoolbuildings, who give sub-contractors their share in infrastructure projects.

Ghost deliveries

Can probers cover hundreds of ghost deliveries, under deliveries and use of sub-standard materials? There’s an old term for a new highway that cracks or sinks for lack of dowels: Matapang sa buhangin.

Dowels are steel bars road builders design to reinforce concrete. All contracts to build roads provide for a net of steel dowels to prevent cracks. We often see excavations to repair concrete roads in Metro Manila. And we see concrete slabs, eight to 10 inches thick, without steel bars to reinforce a powdery concrete of mysterious mix of little cement and tons of crushed stones called aggregate, gravel and sand.

Like a rainbow

In the provinces most concrete bridges have the visible bend in the middle, suggesting that substandard steel bars – say 12.5 mm in lieu of 25 mm – were used by contractors to get huge profits subject to sharing with…

How can graft crusaders tell that substandard materials “support” one bridge? Or roads that are matapang sa buhangin and without dowels? It’s too late for them to drill holes and test the materials used.

Prosecution in China

This month in China about a dozen bureaucrats were sentenced to death for large-scale corruption, which exists in all poor and rich countries.

The great difference is: In China delaying tactics and appeals are well regulated.

In less than five years the culprits, men and women, get the full penalty imposed by law and the courts.

If graft cannot be abolished in China still it can be said that the nation’s numbers of grafters can be limited to not more than their usual crowd.

More delays

Again, it’s different in RP where graft cases fill the courts’ dockets that lead to more delays. As more grafters tend to ignore or avoid sanctions, no matter how severe, law enforcement faces a stand-off.

It’s a kind of cycle of 10 graft convictions being replaced by 15 or 20 more prosecutions for the same offense of stealing government money/property.

To support the budget

As suggested by veteran observers/critics the government can employ more and more graft probers and judges with this chilling effect: As fast convictions are carried out, RP can balance the national budget, reducing graft amounting to tens of billions monthly in various regulatory agencies and departments with huge allocations for infrustructure.

From the top

Reforms in the bureaucracy, no matter how small, can be followed with some effects if started by high officials we usually call good conduct by example.

In August, 1960, Congress passed the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019) “to repress certain acts of public officers and private persons alike which constitute graft or corrupt practices
or which may lead thereto.”

The above has been amended many times in the last 49 years, but its enforcement has suffered more and more delays, even during Martial Law. With swift convictions, as in China, this act can still help minimize graft. (Comments are welcome at roming@pefianco.com)