PERC – the HK-based risk consultancy firm, recently announced the results of its survey: the Philippines is now the “MOST CORRUPT” country in Asia.
It’s easy to see why. You have a president who protects a close family friend and perverts the law to suppress any investigation of a widely publicized fertilizer scam involving billions of pesos. You have an ombudsman, with close ties to the First Gentleman, who publicly vows there are no sacred cows in the fight against corruption, and yet exonerates all Comelec officials involved in what the Supreme Court has already declared an anomalous purchase of vote-counting equipment. It’s like having a crime without criminals. The PERC report sums it well: “There is no sincere effort to curb corruption.” It’s all lip service.
The Philippines is now the second most dangerous place for journalists, next only to Iraq. Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, concluded in his report that the military was responsible for many of the hundreds of unsolved killings. The Melo commission was more specific. They found Gen. Jovito Palparan, aptly nicknamed “the butcher”, liable for these killings. This is the same man that the president heaped praises on during her state of the nation address last year.
The president, of course, vowed to deal with it. But a few weeks after the Alston report came out, she commended the army contingent deployed in vote-rich urban poor areas for “a job well done.” In the first place, the army had no business being there. We’re not under martial law. Or are we?
The killings continue. There is really no sincere effort to stop it. It’s all lip service.
Corruption and the extrajudicial kilings will worsen, unless we do something about it.
You can help stop corruption and the killings by campaigning and voting into Congress 100 men and women of moral courage who can exact accountability from the GMA regime through congressional investiga-tions and by initiating the only constitutionally prescribed process of determining culpable violation of the constitution by the president – impeachment.
Let your vote make a difference this coming May. Use it to stop corruption and the killings.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for some good men to do nothing."
- Edmund Burke
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