ANTI-GRAFT
REFORMS FAILED – DE VENECIA
MANILA -- Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP)
senatorial aspirant Joey De Venecia said the country’s
dismal showing in the ranking of Southeast Asia’s most
corrupt nations and the ballooning of poverty incidence due
to chronic budget shortfalls in basic services were telling
indictments against the Arroyo administration's failure to
stamp out graft and corruption.
“It is most disheartening to learn that
the Philippines has again received the dubious honor of being
ranked as the fourth most corrupt country in Southeast Asia.
This, despite the Arroyo administration’s lip service
against graft and corruption, amid a long string of scandalous
deals involving its top officials and their families,”
de Venecia said.
In a report released Tuesday, the Political
and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said the Philippines
scored 8.06 on a scale of 0 to 10 – with zero as the
best possible score, indicating the lowest level of corruption
among politicians and civil servants.
Indonesia is the most corrupt in Southeast
Asia at 9.27, with Cambodia at 9.10 and Vietnam at 8.07 ranked
second and third respectively, according to PERC.
“The next administration will have a
tall order – to restore public confidence in government
which has fallen to all-time lows rarely seen since the founding
of our republic,” said de Venecia.
“This is a most shameful legacy being
left by the Arroyo administration – that despite its
touted anti-corruption programs, our nation’s leaders
continue to have their fingers caught in the government till,”
he lamented.
De Venecia has seen this first-hand in the
scuttled ZTE-NBN nationwide broadband deal, where, of the
P16-billion total project cost backed by a Palace insider,
fully P10 billion would have gone to corruption and kickbacks.
De Venecia, who founded the country’s
call center industry, had been instrumental in attracting
at least $100 million in investments in the information technology
(IT) sector. He was the original proponent of a national broadband
communications infrastructure project and his project would
have been fully funded by the private sector. But he backed
out from the NBN project in the face of bribery offers and
extortion threats.
De Venecia’s testimony in the Senate
exposing this resulting in the scuttling of the hastily-done
deal which President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo allowed to be
signed by former Transport and Communications Secretary and
now Executive Secretary Leandro Mendoza.
“This nagging perception, and reality,
of corrupt deals being pursued in government severely damages
our country’s image and discourages the entry of foreign
investments vital for national development and progress. We
in the opposition will strenuously work for both institutional
and policy reforms against corruption, in the likelihood of
getting the Filipino people’s nod on May 10,”
de Venecia said./PN
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