Graft and Corruption: A Political Drama
by Self-enrichment by public officials through graft and corruption has been blamed in most part of the country’s economic stagnation and the poverty of the people.
For the past months, our nation has been a spectator of the different political issues in the country. We have the different issues about the unlawful activities of our political leaders. One of this is the Graft and Corruption, the word and issue that we often heard from the news in the television and read from the newspaper.
As defined in the dictionary, graft means the use of dishonest or illegal means to gain money or property by somebody in a position of power or in elected office while corruption means dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain or the corrupting of something or somebody, or the state of being corrupt.
Corruption in the Philippines has cost the country close to $60 bn in two decades and is threatening critical foreign investment, according to a World Bank study. And now corruption was costing the government about $47m a year. It cited an official study, which found corruption had totaled $62.97 bn (31 December 2009).
It said the government should try to reduce the opportunities and motivation for corruption and make it a “high-risk, low-reward” activity. We Filipinos believed there are some degrees of corruption in the government and the private sector had a critical role to play. As a frequent source of bribes for public officials, the private sector shares responsibility for corruption. Instead of doing their job as government official and to help the people, they focused on their own desires and not for the country.
Graft and Corruption is an issue as old as governance itself. Corruption is the biggest problem facing companies after the country’s chronic crime. Filipinos therefore tend to be cynical about corruption in government. They are not anymore shocked that public officials are corrupt. Yet more and more Filipinos are now raising issues about the effectiveness of government performance, the accountability of government institutions. They have realized that democracy in itself does not ensue the government officials and institutions are immune to the corruption.
Modern life, according to the poet and filmmaker Guy Debord, “presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles, and all that once was directly lived has become mere representation”. The political issues that we all have witnessed represents not just those in power, but stands as an impassioned testament of our nation as well.
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