Why corruption endures regardless of 25 years of reform

On November 6, Thursday, the Institute for Solidarity in Asia (ISA) will mark its twenty fifth anniversary — a milestone that, in a simply and rational world — must be a nationwide celebration. For 1 / 4 of a century, ISA has labored quietly and methodically to remodel how authorities works within the Philippines. It has coached bureaucracies into coherence, skilled civil servants to suppose when it comes to outcomes reasonably than excuses, and constructed a governance framework — the Efficiency Governance System (PGS) — that has turned public companies as soon as mired in inefficiency into fashions of competence.

ISA’s achievements are actual and measurable. Lots of of public establishments have handed by its levels of reform, studying the vocabulary of accountability and technique. The group’s founders, led by the economist Jesus P. Estanislao, have performed one thing extraordinary: they’ve tried to make integrity procedural. In a rustic the place reform has lengthy been equated with rhetoric, ISA has given reform a grammar, a syntax, and, most crucially, a system.

And but, corruption stays, hydra-headed and unbowed, breeding quicker than reform can chase it.

Because the anniversary approaches, one can not assist however ask: How can corruption stay so deep, so resilient, so omnipresent — if the nation’s most revered governance reform motion has been at work for 25 years?

The lengthy shadow of Marcos

Each trustworthy reply to that query should start with Ferdinand E. Marcos. His two-decade regime didn’t invent corruption; it normalized it. It wove it into the muscle reminiscence of the authorities. Marcos reworked graft from ethical failure right into a political working system — institutionalizing bribery, patronage, and plunder so completely that even after his ouster in 1986, the habits he created proved ineradicable.

His dictatorship taught a whole era that loyalty is forex, silence is advantage, and energy is its personal ethical justification. When democracy returned, the outdated tradition didn’t retreat; it merely tailored. It hid beneath democratic types, disguising self-interest as public service, impunity as “enterprise as regular.”

The Marcos years didn’t merely harm establishments; they retrained the Filipino conscience, dulling its sensitivity to corruption. It left behind an ethical infrastructure — invisible but indestructible — that each reformer since has needed to combat towards.

The flood management parable

Nothing reveals this extra starkly than the latest flood management scandal — billions of pesos siphoned from public coffers, disguised as infrastructure. Roads to nowhere, culverts to ghost cities, and budgets swollen like rivers after rain.

This newest scandal is nearly a parody of itself — a rerun so acquainted that outrage has grown weary. It exposes the aching distinction between the world ISA envisions and the one we nonetheless inhabit. On one hand, civil servants stand on podiums declaring “good governance” and “institutional transformation,” armed with scorecards, technique maps, and multi-sector councils. On the opposite hand, politicians and bureaucrats quietly prepare the diversion of flood funds whereas the actual floods — of water, of waste, of ethical decay — drown the very communities they swore to guard.

It’s as if two republics exist inside the similar archipelago: one which ISA is patiently establishing, and one other that corruption has lengthy claimed as its personal.

Reform as structure, corruption as tradition

ISA’s mannequin assumes that corruption might be countered by programs — that when you introduce self-discipline, outline measurable objectives, and reward benefit, good governance will observe. The Efficiency Governance System (PGS) is, on this sense, a triumph of technocratic rationality.

However corruption, within the Philippines, shouldn’t be a programs drawback. It’s a cultural inheritance — half survival technique, half social expectation, wholly human. It resides not in insurance policies however in instincts: the impulse to guard kin earlier than nation, to conflate generosity with bribery, to mistake crafty for intelligence.

ISA has performed what few organizations have dared to do: it has constructed the structure of integrity. However structure can not by itself change the local weather. The Philippines stays humid with cynicism —a rustic the place good governance is admired in concept and betrayed in apply.

ISA can measure compliance, but it surely can not measure conscience. It will probably train establishments carry out with effectivity, however not blush with disgrace.

The divide between framework and flesh

The enduring stress between ISA’s advocacy and the nation’s actuality lies in what may be referred to as the divide between framework and flesh.

Frameworks are elegant, ordered, and ethical by design. Flesh — the human aspect — is impulsive, fragile, and endlessly self-justifying. A authorities company might earn “Institutionalized” standing underneath the PGS but nonetheless play the outdated recreation of political patronage. An area govt might quote ISA’s mission in speeches but quietly log off on padded contracts.

It isn’t hypocrisy a lot as twin citizenship: one foot within the Republic of Reform, the opposite within the Kingdom of Kickbacks.

The Philippine paperwork typically lives in two realities — the formal and the casual, the aspirational and the transactional. Reform frameworks just like the PGS function within the formal world, the place metrics matter and beliefs are displayed. However corruption thrives within the casual one, the place private money owed and household loyalties determine every thing.

Till these two worlds are reconciled — till governance turns into not simply procedural however cultural — corruption will all the time have the higher hand.

Islands in an ocean of decay

And but, dismissing ISA as futile can be unfair — even merciless. Over the previous 25 years, the Institute has produced “Islands of Good Governance” — hospitals that serve with compassion, native governments that plan with foresight, and companies that ship measurable outcomes. These are usually not illusions; they’re proofs of idea.

However each island, irrespective of how virtuous, is surrounded by an ocean. And the waters — turbulent, polluted, morally treacherous — stay unchanged.

ISA’s problem for its subsequent 25 years is to not multiply islands, however to remodel the ocean itself. To make good governance not an exception to Filipino tradition, however its expression.

That, after all, shouldn’t be a technical activity. It’s a non secular one.

The Filipino paradox

What maybe haunts the Philippine reform story most is the peculiar fatalism of its individuals — the quiet perception that corruption is inevitable, like visitors or typhoons. We communicate of graft with the identical weary humor we reserve for unhealthy climate. This give up — delicate, smiling, collective — is the oxygen corruption breathes.

ISA can design programs of accountability, but it surely can not but design outrage. It will probably construct efficiency dashboards, but it surely can not construct residents who refuse to look away.

Till Filipinos stop to tolerate corruption — till we deal with it not as inconvenience however as desecration — no reform, nevertheless noble, can absolutely prevail.

The quarter century reckoning

As November 6 attracts close to, and ISA commemorates 25 years of laborious, hopeful work, the celebration should even be a second of reckoning. The Institute has confirmed that reform is feasible — however the Republic has proven that reform shouldn’t be but ample.

ISA has unquestionably illuminated what good governance might be. The query is whether or not the Philippines — bruised, cynical, hooked on shortcuts— really needs to be ruled effectively.

Corruption endures not as a result of ISA has failed, however as a result of we have now refused to evolve. We stay, as ever, a nation of extraordinary intelligence and astonishing tolerance — outraged by scandal in public, and but privately resigned to its inevitability.

On November 6, as reformers collect to mark 1 / 4 century of hope, maybe the truest approach to honor ISA’s legacy shouldn’t be by ceremony however by a collective and particular person examination of conscience — to lastly confront the ethical paradox that has outlined and shackled us: that within the Philippines, the structure of integrity stands tall, but beneath it, the foundations are nonetheless quietly eroding.

The group based by a Harvard-trained Filipino economist continues to drive the ethical awakening taking place at the moment, within the context of the unprecedented magnitude of the flood management tasks scandal. The group is well-positioned to “remodel the ocean” itself. – Rappler.com

Disclosure: The creator is the founder and managing companion of a public relations and digital advertising and marketing company. The people, manufacturers, firms, organizations, companies, and establishments talked about on this commentary haven’t any enterprise relationship along with his company, nor are they rivals of its purchasers.