Aquino taps US expert as anti-corruption consultant

MANILA, Philippines - If former president Arroyo had Hong Kong’s Tony Kwok as anti-corruption consultant, President Aquino has American professor Robert Klitgaard, dubbed as the “world’s leading expert on corruption.”

“Those of you here, especially Dr. Klitgaard, are a significant part of this. We need to strengthen what is working, and rectify what is not,” the Chief Executive said during yesterday’s Cabinet workshop on anti-corruption strategies in Malacañang.

He said the government has to make sure that those in the margins receive tangible benefits of good governance, even if those who are in the reins are relentlessly pursuing reforms.

“Dr. Klitgaard has famously said that corruption equals monopoly of power, plus official discretion, minus accountability. Accountability is the people’s domain,” the President further explained.

One strategy the Aquino government wants to put in place is “not just to bring daylight into every nook and cranny in government, but also to open the halls of power to the people.”

Meanwhile, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the difference between the current and the previous governments is the head of state, and not really about tapping the expertise of any corruption expert.

“The difference is the head of government,” he said, comparing his boss to Arroyo, now a congresswoman from Pampanga, whose nine-year administration that ended in June 2010 was rocked with different kinds of scandals.

“You will never find it in this administration,” Lacierda added, while acknowledging that there was a need “to come up with pro-active measures” to combat graft and corruption in the bureaucracy, which is why a one-day seminar was held for the purpose. 

Awesome credentials

The spokesman said Klitgaard was invited through the help of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and the Asian Institute of Management.

Klitgaard has advised many governments on economic strategy and institutional reform, and his consulting work and research have taken him to more than 30 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The American corruption expert is also a professor at Claremont Graduate University, where he served as president from 2005 to 2009.

Prior to this, he served as the dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School in Santa Monica, California, where he was also the Ford Distinguished Professor of International Development and Security.

Klitgaard previously served as professor of Economics at the University of Natal, Durban; Lester Crown Professor of Economics at Yale School of Management; and Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he also served half-time as Special Assistant to Harvard president Derek Bok.

He has been called “the world’s leading expert on corruption” by The Christian Science Monitor.

In the past five years he has served on the faculty of the World Economic Forum, the editorial boards of the Journal of Economic Literature and Theoria, and the Board of the International Development Evaluation Association.

He has been a consultant to the Asia Foundation, the Asian Development Bank, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, the Inter-American Development Bank, the IMF, the OECD, the Organization of American States, the White House, the United Nations, USAID, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, as well as to many governments around the world.