Corruption’s many manifestations

PRESS Secretary Ignacio Bunye initially referred to them as donations. The congressmen who admitted to being recipients considered these either as cash gifts or party contributions. None, including the two governors who first came forward to shed light on the matter, Ed Panlilio of Pampanga and Joselito Mendoza of Bulacan, thought they were being bribed. Environment Secretary Lito Atienza even went to the extent of saying such “gift-giving” is customary, relating how he was handed out P100,000-200,000 in cash or checks as financial assistance by the President when he was mayor of Manila.

No matter how our public officials are trying to justify last week’s confirmed distribution of money to congressmen and local executives after meetings with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in Malacañang, this latest scandal surely smells of yet another government anomaly, if not corruption.

But granting there were indeed payoffs, says Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol, this cannot be considered a case of bribery in the absence of any imposed conditions. So says Acting Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera, who notes as well that “nobody is crying bribery from those who accepted it.”

Well, technically. Bribery, as perhaps the most common, and most visible, type of corruption, is defined as giving anything of value — whether in cash or in kind — to an official in exchange for an act or an omission in that official’s public functions.

In the PCIJ book, Investigating Corruption, bribes (citing Yale University professor Susan Rose-Ackerman) are paid primarily:

• to get a benefit (in the case of procurement contracts; access to government-regulated goods, credit, foreign exchange, import and export license, or business permit; access to government services or subsidies; even purchase of state assets at a bargain-basement price)

• to avoid costs, such as compliance with regulations, taxes, prosecution for illegal activities, delays, and red tape

• for official positions (as in the case of school teachers paying principals one-month’s salary to get a teaching position)

While it can be argued that there were no favors asked as a quid pro quo, the “gift-giving” cannot simply be seen as an isolated act of kindness, far removed from the context of recent events. There was, after all, a recently filed and endorsed impeachment complaint against Arroyo that stemmed from the controversial, bribery-tainted national broadband network deal.

And what of her announcement to revive charter change initiatives this time anchored on federalism immediately after the Palace meetings? Wasn’t this a throwback to July 2005, when she first called for a shift to a parliamentary and federal form of government in her state of the nation address on the same day that an impeachment complaint was filed against her?

But let us grant Apostol and Devanadera their legal reasoning. Still, if not bribery, then clearly there’s patronage here. In the academic sense, dispensing patronage is considered a form of corruption though unfortunately, in the Philippine setting, it isn’t. Yet while the practice of dispensing government largesse is seen as socially acceptable, few would deny patronage’s corrosive influence on our politics.

From the same PCIJ book, patronage is described as:

entailing the distribution of government largesse — jobs, subsidized housing, public land, and other public goods and services — in exchange for political support. It is a way of acquiring, maintaining, and expanding political power by distributing economic benefits from the state and dispensing them to political allies, ward leaders, and followers.

Undeniably, patronage permeates Philippine politics, both at the national and local levels. The President, with his/her control of much of the economic resources of the state, remains the supreme dispenser of patronage in the country. But, for the sore lack of mature political parties, he/she has to rely on local politicians to govern and be elected. For instance, patronage in the form of prompt releases of pork-barrel funds has effectively been used to get congressmen to vote for administration-sponsored bills. During elections, patronage keeps the vote-getting machinery well oiled.

And in Arroyo’s particular case, patronage engineered the demise of the first impeachment case against her, which was attended by reports of fund releases to congressmen, appointments of members of their families and relatives to government positions, promises of projects and other favors.

Apparently, they are into it again.