RP ranked as ‘moderate’ in governance, fighting corruption

The Philippines is "moderate" in terms of governance and addressing corruption in a poll of 40 countries, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) said yesterday.

The SWS said the Philippines scored 73 and was classified as "moderate" in the 2006 Global Integrity Index.

The Philippines is classified as "strong" in the category of Oversight and Regulation (85), as "moderate" in Civil Society, Public Information and Media (72), Government Accountability (71), Administration and Civil Service (73) and Anti-Corruption and Rule of Law (78), the SWS said, referring to the Global Integrity report on over 40 countries. It was graded "very weak" in the category of Elections (60) in the same study.

Global Integrity is an international non-profit organization that tracks governance and corruption trends around the world.

For the Philippines, Mahar Mangahas of SWS was the lead social scientist who gave the initial scores, after consulting specialists in certain cases, to some 290 indicators designed by Global Integrity, and who revised them later based on feedback from anonymous peer reviewers.

Global Integrity is responsible for grouping the scores into six categories, averaging them and classifying them as "very strong," "strong," "moderate," "weak" or "very weak."

The SWS said the 2006 Global Integrity Index has no countries generally classified as "very strong."

Countries classified as "strong," arranged in alphabetical order, are Israel, Romania, South Africa, and the United States.

The countries classified as "moderate" were Argentina, Benin, Brazil, Bulgaria, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines and Uganda.

Guatemala, Indonesia, Kyrgyz Republic, Mexico, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal, Serbia and Zimbabwe were classified as "weak."

The "very weak" class includes Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Lebanon, Liberia, Montenegro, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Vietnam and Yemen. — Helen Flores