Anti-corruption — no mission impossible  

A counterculture movement against corruption in the Philippines has earned accolades from no less than the United Nations Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), thanks in large part to the efforts of Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) Commissioner Nicasio A. Conti.

The movement is a private sector-initiated scheme pioneered in 2005 that finances good governance initiatives from annual interest earnings of an endowment fund called Philippine Integrity Fund (PIF). Bisyon 2020 or Business for Integrity and Stability of Our Nation, a non-stock, non-profit organization, administers the PIF under the direction of upstanding business leaders led by Loida Nicolas Lewis, one of the most accomplished Filipinas in the United States who runs the billion-dollar business empire TLC Beatrice and leader of Filipino-American advocacies.  

PCGG Commissioner Conti had highlighted Bisyon 2020 in his presentation last month at the UNCAC technical working group meeting held in Vienna, Austria. He informed the group that Bisyon 2020 would soon launch a Justice Watch website, where an online monitoring system of anti-corruption cases would be made available to the public. The Office of the Ombudsman and Yehey Corp. have been tapped as partners for the initiative.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC), represented by its Crime Conventions Section at the Vienna meeting, was particularly impressed by these developments. As a result, Bisyon 2020 and PIF will be cited as a best practice for private sector-led anti-corruption initiatives by the UNODC-CCS itself. Its first presentation as such will be made at the Global Compact Implementation Workshop for senior managers to be held at the UN System Staff College in Turin, Italy this week.

This should make all of us hopeful that no matter how entrenched corruption may be in our society, we are slowly but surely chipping away at it. As Loida Lewis herself put it when Bisyon 2020 was launched two years ago, “Corruption breeds poverty, poverty breeds injustice, injustice breeds rebellion and therefore, there is no stability in our nation.”  

The vision for the private sector initiative is that by 2020, corruption in government would have been greatly reduced and Filipinos would no longer tolerate this scourge that has dragged down the country’s progress. Indeed, it has been estimated that the country loses more than 20 percent of its annual budget to corruption and that from 1995-2000, as much as P609 billion was lost to corruption. Imagine how much more progressive our country would have been had that amount been plowed into the economy rather than into the pockets of corrupt officials!

As Bisyon 2020 has shown, resources matter in the fight against corruption. The PIF, in fact, was designed to help the Ombudsman hire the best lawyers, accountants, researchers and investigators to build up graft cases against corrupt government officials. The scheme has also been implemented in a particularly ingenious way that works sustainability into the whole effort. According to Ma. Lourdes A. Arcenas, executive director of Bisyon 2020, “PIF is an endowment fund capitalized by a swap of Philippine debt paper, the interest earnings of which are yearly utilized for the sole purpose of funding anti-corruption or good governance advocacy programs and projects.” No wonder the UN was impressed.

Commissioner Conti couldn’t have chosen a better time to highlight such accomplishments before an international audience. It provides some relief to the national embarrassment over the alleged rigged procurement practices in the implementation of road projects that has prompted the World Bank to suspend funding. We can at least tell ourselves that it’s not all bad in the country, after all.

It helps, of course, that we have in government someone like Commissioner Conti whose advocacy against corruption has been his life’s work.

Prior to his appointment to the PCGG, he was a commissioner of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, a lead discussant on UNCAC, and a member of the government’s technical working group that studied the implications of UNCAC on the government’s fight against corruption.

He has also helped steer Bisyon 2020 from its inception as the private foundation’s corporate secretary. No wonder this private sector initiative has now become a working partnership with the Office of the Ombudsman, which is at the forefront of the country’s anti-corruption efforts.

Conti is geared up to do more next year. He is due to address the 2nd Conference of the State Parties to the UNCAC about asset recovery efforts of the PCGG. The event, slated for January 29 to February 2 next year in Bali, Indonesia, presents another good opportunity for the Philippines to shore up confidence on efforts to combat corruption. And who better to do the task than the fellow awarded by the British government with the Chevening Fellowship on Public Sector Reform Course? Yes, the good PCGG commissioner has been named one of the awardees of this prestigious fellowship. He’ll be off to the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom by January next year to attend the course, after which we can expect more initiatives from this young commissioner who has done our country proud.

*   *   *

On the night of the full moon (6 p.m., November 24 last weekend), a mother and daughter opened their joint exhibit entitled “Kulay at Kislap” at the Likha- Diwa Vegetarian Cafe on 1 Lt. J. Francisco Street, Barangay Krus na Ligas, Quezon City (beside the UP Campus in Diliman).

Sinag de Leon Amado’s exhibit consists of exquisite paperworks. Sinag combines intricate cutouts with handmade paper. As an artist-writer puts it, Sinag “expresses sensitivity one only finds in the most refined works of folk artists sheltered from the stress and callousness of urban life.”

Says our artist-writer: “Anyone who doubts that the Filipino aesthetic that dwells in the hearts of the Yakan weavers who create amazing saputangan scarves in Tipo-tipo, Basilan, is the same one that guides the hand that makes fragile pastillas wrappers of San Miguel de Mayumo in Bulacan will soon be enlightened: it is also the same spirit that has Sinag gathering snowflake patterns and textured paper to produce pieces that are uniquely hers and collectively ours at the same time.”

Sinag’s pieces are described as “grace on grid and a field of semi-opaque multi-layered layer that almost fools the eye. For it is two-dimensional and paper, not a shower of flower-like shapes from heaven. Frame each piece and it is a window to another world. Hang it on a wall or door and it could be the transition between here and Narnia.”

Beside Sinag’s pieces are Raya’s sparkling colors of the innocent. Raya is only 12 years old, and she is said to look at the world around her and sees the brilliant hues of Philippine fruits.

Raya was trained by painter and teacher Fernando Sena and master woodcarver Fermin Madridejos Jr of Paete. Raya is said to bring back the wonder that the European expressionists felt as they basked in tropical revelations: Gaugin and Matisse contrasting their cold surroundings with warm images of paradise. Raya presents picture after picture without hesitation because, says our writer-friend, “her colors are not borrowed from a far-away place in her imagination. They are here, now, smiling before your eyes. Raya’s works prove to us that optimism and trust do lie in the center of being of young ones, despite the hard life that we adults seem to inflict on them. It is a gift that has been violently snatched form many girl-children. Raya, fortunately for us, shows us hope.”

*   *   *

At the opening evening of the exhibit, Sinag’s brother, Diwa de Leon and his band Makiling added magic to the mother-daughter show with their music.

The show runs up to January 21 (the day before full moon) 2008.

*   *   *

My e-mail: [email protected]