Arroyo to barangays: Report officials with lavish lifestyles

Who are the public officials in your neighborhood? If you observe that they spend "more than Bill Gates," then public money might be going down the drain.

President Arroyo called on barangay leaders and their constituents to keep an eye on the lifestyles of public officials in their areas — to notice the number of cars in their driveways, the types of houses they live in, the schools attended by their children — as government intensifies its drive against graft and corruption.

Their bank deposits and other savings are, of course, for financial institutions and the Bureau of Internal Revenue to keep a tab on.

"I am expecting you to report to the (Presidential Anti-Graft Commission) the government officials residing in your villages who act and spend even more than Bill Gates, the so-called richest man on earth," Mrs. Arroyo said in Filipino to barangay leaders Tuesday night.

She was referring to the 49-year-old chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft, who has a net worth of over $50 billion. Gates dropped out of Harvard to pursue a career developing software and founded Microsoft in the 1970s with partner Paul Allen.

Mrs. Arroyo admitted the problem of corruption in the country "is endemic" but assured that her administration has been fighting the problem relentlessly.

"What I can say is that this has been an endemic problem. We recognize that we must fight corruption because (it) prevents us from being able to use the resources of our government to bring service to our people and... from being able to mobilize our potential investments in the country," she said in Cebu City last week.

Foreign businessmen have ranked the Philippines as the second most corrupt country in Asia, according to results of a survey conducted by a Hong Kong-based consultancy group.

Indonesia is ranked the most corrupt country in the region, raising fears about how billions of dollars in post-tsunami aid will be spent, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy Ltd. said. PERC, which provides advice to companies and governments on how to conduct business in Asia, polled more than 900 expatriate respondents across the region in January and February.

"While I feel that they should have recognized our efforts now to fight corruption, what I would like to assure the world and the people of the Philippines is that we are determined to be able to address this endemic problem that has been existing in the country for the last 30 years or so," she said.

"While we can’t end it abruptly overnight, we are making decisive moves towards fighting it and ending it within a perceptible period of time," she added.

The President noted the perception of corruption in the Philippines had existed prior to the survey and that it would take a greater effort to reverse this perception.

Mrs. Arroyo also enumerated her administration’s recent moves to address corruption such as the drive against illegal logging, the filing of charges against corrupt officials and the seizure of their assets by the government.