Corruption demon getting more prolific

This is apropos to a previous piece on the corruption control test which the US-government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) has set for the Philippines to qualify for the $700 M tranche for its poorest families.

To recall, MCC has granted poor nations multi-million dollars in yearly aid, depending on compliance with 17 criteria or area indicators. RP passed in 14 areas, but has hitherto flunked in the “control of corruption”, a must-pass indicator test.

The MCC yearly grants fluctuated based on compliance with the corruption control test. To reiterate, the RP barely passed in 2006 with 76 percentile, then 57 percentile in 2007, and 47 percentile in 2008 and, incidentally, also failed in 2008 in health (19 percentile) and in education (32 percentile) area indicators.

The yearly worsening results in such area tests, especially in the must-pass corruption control criterion, sets the RP in danger of losing the $700 million manna for the very poor in 2009.

It thus put the RP under the "threshold" status. However, the MCC later moved up the 'threshold" status to "compact" status with commensurate increase to the Philippine Ombudsman office aid, as a chance to improve the corruption control efforts until it passes the test.

According to Ambassador Willy Gaa, as reported in the wire services, the MCC has called on the Arroyo administration "to intensify efforts to fight corruption, as it will be closely monitored by the MCC. Ambassador Gaa, however, lamented that MCC had allegedly "changed the rules in midstream", in reference to two additional sources of "unflattering evaluation of corruption in the Philippines".

Obviously, Gaa could have in mind the stats on criteria yardsticks from the World Bank Institute, the Transparency International on corruption perception index, and on the findings of the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy which also collated inputs from mere perceptions.

Whatever and whichever universal perceptions have emerged, it is without question that the RP miserably flunks in its highly-touted fight against corruption. Not only is this the uniform impression worldwide, but more than all these, the Filipinos themselves acutely sense the prevalence of festering corruption in government. And there's no end in sight.

Name any branch or agency in government… well, based on COA's annual post-audit of LGUs' expenses and fiscal operations, and based on the various national departments and offices transactions, one could hardly come across any of them as an exception.

Such corruptions over the infamous "pork barrel" of members of Congress, or the executive, and then involving the national offices, as the DepEd in the scams over books, supplies, school buildings, or in BIR kickbacks and the Customs over technical smuggling, or in the AFP over funds pilferage, or even in the judiciary over the JDF funds, or in colossal scams, as the ZTE/NBN, the Northrail, the fertilizer scams, the election over-expenses, etc. with no holds barred…

And now there's that mega bombshell that Senator Ping Lacson has begun to ignite against, again, the First Gentleman. It's over the World Bank denunciation of certain Filipino companies allegedly rigging and/or manipulating public works contracts using the name - in vain? - of the FG whose purported diary(?) betrays the connection.

Would this not be like the Jose Pidal dud that failed to detonate after a hazy smoke? Definitely though, it appears this is not just "when there's smoke, there must be fire" scam.