Politicians are businessmen: They don't spend, they invest

When roads are still filled with potholes and politicians seem not to care, you should know they don’t need anything from you. When faced with compelling necessities where the much needed answers are undeniably in the politicians’ table and they seem to be scantily available, you should know that you are momentarily negligible.

On the other hand, when a known snooty tend to be accommodating and a condemned tightfisted suddenly becomes so generous, you might entertain the idea that the world never runs out of miracles. But truth to tell, more likely, the man is into something else. The fact is, all style-changing approaches are so compelling for the men and women who had been in it or are yet to squeeze themselves curiously into a messy world of entertainment we call politics, or distinctively, our brand of politics. A kind of politics that is totally dirty from beginning to end. This is a kind of politics where every coveted position has a price tag. Therefore, anyone who can afford gets it. Obviously, it is a kind of politics where the politicians’ willingness to dangle millions is the main determinant. Consequently, as they part with it, they shall be equally determined to get it back, of course, with profits.  

But how are returns assured? There are countless of ways but, absolutely, not from their salaries. Certainly, they can’t live with salaries alone. Such countless of ways are the primary reasons of our being undisputedly on top of every corruption survey and despondently, at the bottom of every poverty incidences survey.

To recall, a little over a year ago, the country was in the limelight when the World Bank released debilitating news about the debarment of seven firms and an individual for “engaging in collusive practices under a major Bank-financed roads project in the Philippines”. The World Bank’s investigating team “uncovered evidence of a major cartel involving local and international firms bidding on contracts under phase one of the Philippines National Roads Improvement and Management Program, known as NRIMP 1”. They “closely analyzed the procurement process the firms participated in and conducted numerous interviews before closing the investigations and initiating sanctions proceedings against the entities”.

Had this anomaly not been uncovered by the World Bank, majority of the Filipinos should not have heard about this project. To refresh our countrymen, the LGU Assistance Portal posted that the “National Roads Improvement and Management Program will ensure the preservation of the national roads system through three phases: design, initiation, and operation. This project covered Phase 1 of the Program, and was to establish a well-functioning preventive maintenance program, re-design the road management program, and promote overall policy and institutional reforms.” It further emphasized that there were two main components of the program. First was the civil works which covered infrastructure development and maintenance.   Second component was the institutional strengthening, including the planning of financial and human resources for business improvement, a road maintenance fund, and independent organization for policy and institutional reforms. For all these undertakings, the site further noted that the government’s loan payable to the World Bank was a staggering US$150 million. NRIMP 1, supposedly covered road projects in Luzon (Benguet, Mr. Province, Laguna, Quezon, La Union, Bulacan, Tarlac, Albay, Cavite, Camarines Norte), Visayas (Negros Occidental, Negros Oriental, Cebu) and Mindanao (Zamboanga del Sur, Bukidnon, Surigao Del Norte, Surigao del Sur, Davao Oriental, Davao del Sur, Davao del Norte).

In this fiasco, the nationalities of entities and individuals involved are singled out as Filipinos and Chinese. This disclosure never came as a surprise. Global surveys in the past have ranked us and China as two of the worst on malpractices. There are two (2) significant surveys that we can deal with. The Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the Bribe Payers Index (BPI) of Transparency International (TI). TI defines corruption as “the abuse of public office for private gain”. In the same breath, bribery is defined as “undocumented extra payments”, made purposely to gain favors.

The 2007 CPI survey, which ranked countries from 1 to 179 with no. 1 as the cleanest, revealed that RP is in the 131st, a cellar dweller. If there is a consolation, it is just because we are a few notches higher than the politically unstable African countries like, Somalia and Chad and the war-torn countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.

The 2006 BPI survey, on the other hand is “a ranking of thirty (30) of the leading exporting countries according to the propensity of firms with headquarters within their borders to bribe when operating abroad”. To determine the “international supply-side of bribery”, as part of the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey 2006, several business executives from 125 countries were asked questions about the business practices of foreign firms operating in their country. They were first asked to identify the country of origin of foreign-owned companies doing most business in their country and were then asked: “In your experience, to what extent do firms from the countries you have selected make undocumented extra payments or bribes?”

This survey revealed that of the thirty top exporting countries, China (at no. 29) is just a shade better than India (at no. 30) as the countries where headquartered firms have high propensity to offer or make undocumented extra payments or bribes to win contracts.

Apparently, with these businessmen coming from countries (Philippines and China) with cultures of malfeasances and malpractices coupled with our kind of politicians who are looking for ways to recover every penny spent during elections, honest biddings will never happen. As usual, they shall be active participants in a collusive scheme designed to establish bid prices at artificial and non-competitive levels. Consequently, they deprived us the benefits of free and open competition. As a result, the poorest of the poor who are really wanting that much needed economic boost continue to suffer out of substandard and overpriced projects. Worst, our taxpayers shall pay for a sizable portion of the loan that went to someone else pockets.

Such is the sad reality of our kind of politics. A kind of politics that is mainly money-driven. Where ordinary men from nowhere initially presented themselves to the people for service and became powerful businessmen once elected. Or men who are already successful businessmen in their own right and run either to protect their interests or widen them.

Indeed, whatever politicians’ inexhaustible rhetoric may try to portray, they are still businessmen. Therefore, they don’t spend, they invest.

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