Corruption as a way of life (2)
Among the top stories of last year was that of an alien who became an elected local government official in the municipality of Bamban in Tarlac province. Alice Leal Guo, whose real name is Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese national, managed to become Bamban mayor for two terms. The story of how Guo Hua Ping became mayor is really one for the books—those of narratives of corruption and other forms of anomalies that are allowed to happen by greedy government functionaries and their principals. Her story is closely associated with that of the equally anomalous Philippine offshore gaming operations (Pogos) that proliferated during the administration of former president Rodrigo Duterte.
The series of hearings in both the House of Representatives and the Senate unraveled various accounts of illegal gambling, trafficking of persons, and even murder in different Pogo hubs not only in the province of Tarlac but also in other parts of the country.
In November 2024, in Cotabato City, a group of Chinese nationals working on the construction of a new and huge shopping mall in the city were intercepted by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation for allegedly working with questionable immigration papers. Some of them were reportedly holding Filipino birth certificates (late registration like what Guo Hua Ping presented as her identification as a Filipino citizen) that were obtained in a small town in Davao del Sur. But almost all of them could not speak any Filipino language or dialect properly.
Why these dubious and obviously anomalous practices were allowed to happen can be explained by the seemingly normalized corrupt practices of government functionaries. Among these are officials and resident “fixers” aka “assistors” in agencies who ensure correct, factual, and verified information on the identities of residents in the country, like the Civil Registrar’s offices in various local government units.
The Commission on Elections is mandated to verify the identities of those who want to be elected to public office. One qualification is that a candidate is a bona fide Filipino citizen. We know that this could be faked by paying off those who process late registration of births; in the case of Alice Guo or Gua Hua Ping, she was registered as a “Filipino” when she was already 17 years old. As the hearings in the Senate and the lower House have shown, the embattled mayor had fabricated stories about her birth circumstances, and when pinned down, would only say meekly, “hindi ko po alam, your honor…” (I don’t know, your honor).
Some unscrupulous staff in regulatory boards like the Environmental Management Bureau, which requires a thorough inspection of private sector enterprises for required environmental compliance certificates (ECCs), are also among those who have succumbed to corrupt practices in carrying out their duties. They take shortcuts in compliance processes in exchange for perks from the owners and managers of business enterprises applying for ECCs. Among them are my former colleagues in my past non-government work. They are now government officials in various agencies. They enjoyed free tours, complete with hotel accommodation and shopping money for their entire families in vacation places abroad, courtesy of the owners of enterprises known to be quite oblivious of environmental regulations on the proper disposal of factory wastes to nearby bodies of water.
Corruption has really become normalized in this country that it would be a “miracle” to find a government office or a local government unit that is free of even a “whiff of corruption.” I recall that former president Duterte used to say he hates corruption, even a “whiff” of it. He truly did. He did not like small-scale corruption; he wanted the opposite.
But perhaps the greatest corruption that can eat away all the resources for the benefit of the poorest of the poor, is the implementation of a budget that has provided opportunities for the avaricious among our government leaders to reconfigure it in a way that would seem to be “legal.” This is the 2025 budget.
Several former high government officials have already decried this year’s budget as the “most corrupt.” There are items in the 2025 budget that have no clear program of work, and equally questionable programs like the Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program, whose beneficiaries are still to be determined. In other words, these programs can be later used to distribute money to the wards of the allies of Mr. Marcos. Among these allies is House Speaker Martin Romualdez, Mr. Marcos’ cousin, who is eyeing the presidency in the forthcoming 2028 elections.
We must brace ourselves for the remaining years of this administration and how it will navigate the sea of corruption that has been in place since the elder Marcos’ “conjugal dictatorship.”
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