ONCE again, the Philippines has ranked among the lowest in a survey of countries with severe corruption. This problem seems to be a reoccurring one, and every year seems to be worse than the previous year for our country.
Ever since Transparency International (TI) began doing its annual corruption perception poll, the Philippines has never scored higher than 3.6 in a 1-10 scale, where 10 is the "cleanest." This year, it scored a mere 2.5 and ranked 117th out of 159 countries surveyed.
The nation fell sharply from last year’s 102nd place, which is not even a good standing to begin with. The highest rating achieved by the Philippines was in 1999, when it scored 3.6 and ranked 54th out of 99 countries. From then, it has been a slippery slope ending in our current repute as one of the most corrupt nations in the world.
It makes one sad to realize that in the Philippines, corruption seems such a constant feature in our public life. We know that countries with rampant corruption are most often the poorest nations, as corruption is both a cause of poverty and a deterrent to its effectual solution. It robs our people of limited resources, and results in bad infrastructure, poor education and insufficient public services.
In 2003, the World Economic Forum, an independent international organization, ranked the Philippines 76th in its corruption index of 80 countries. Earlier this year the Asian Development Bank (ADB) painted a bleaker picture, ranking the Philippines second to Bangladesh among 102 countries in terms of the magnitude of irregular payments, including bribery, in public contracts.
This perception of corruption seriously prevents businessmen from investing, and as such, is also at the core of joblessness in the country. The World Bank estimated that corruption was costing the Philippines government a whopping $47 million or
R2.5 billion a year.
In the Philippines, corruption is revealed mostly in rigged public works contracts. But the roots of corruption are manifold. One that easily comes to mind is a political environment conducive to corruption and high-level dishonesty.
There is a strong connection between corruption and ideology: Political parties that lack strong ideological commitments are more prone to corruption. As in emerging democracies worldwide, political parties in the Philippines are either too weak, too personalistic, or too corrupt and out of touch to earn the respect and support of the public.
By strengthening our political party system, I believe we can progressively find a solution to the neverending problem of corruption, as well as regain our people’s trust in the political system. Email:
edgardo_angara@hotmail.com 
