A Report Card on Corruption

By: Bob Boyer

 

On a recent Saturday evening as we left Church, a friend asked me how things were in the Philippines. He knew about my monthly column and had been genuinely interested, so I was not surprised by his question even though we hadn’t seen one another in over a year because of the pandemic. In fact he asked first about COVID-19 in the Philippines. As we touched on a range of other issues, a recurring question kept coming up: how was Duterte doing on corruption in government? He had famously pledged to wipe it out in six months, ‘or you can get rid of me’.

Accusation of corruption against Duterte got early headlines in the Philippines and beyond when Duterte launched his promised War on Drugs (WOD) shortly after his election in June of 2016. The widespread violence of the WOD earned national and international attention, quickly followed by the accusations of governmental and police (both local and national) corruption. Enter Maria Ressa and “Rappler”.

I have written a number of columns about how Maria Ressa, editor of the online newsmagazine “Rappler,” has attacked both Duterte and the police for widespread “extrajudicial murder” and for blatantly ignoring standard legal and humane standards. In retaliation, Duterte and his allies in government have repeatedly and publicly attacked Ressa. Perhaps even more vicious have been the attacks by a large online population now referred to in the press as “Duterte’s Trolls.”

Maria Ressa, as I have written in this column earlier this year (and before), is now continuously and directly attacked, personally on social media, and legally in court for violating the so-called “Cyber Libel Law,” passed by Duterte’s majority allies in the government. Ressa’s plight and the WOD generally has been covered in detail in a 2019 book by Pete r Pomerantsev, “This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality,” recently reviewed in “Literary Review” (June 2021). The book describes a “new breed of digital-era manipulation” in the Philippines.

“Literary Review” quotes the book about how Duterte vowed “to kill so many drug dealers it would fatten the fish in Manila Bay, and joked that he would sign a pardon to forgive himself.” And Pomerantsev claims, “At one point thirty-three were being killed a day. No one would check if the victims were actually guilty, and there were frequent reports of drugs being planted on victims after they were dead.”

While it is true that Duterte has made it easier for anyone to bring an accusation against the police authorities and others in government, it is also true that the police and Duterte have largely succeeded in stonewalling repeated claims of police corruption. The stonewalling has led “Rappler” to declare that “In Duterte’s Drug War Justice is Nearly Impossible” (July 6, 2021). And, according to “This Week in Asia” (September 1, 2021), quoting the “South China Morning Post,” “Philippine corruption under Duterte holds at the same level: bad.”

Clearly the WOD does not support Duterte’s anti-corruption claim. But his appointment of Roy Cimatu as his Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) does. In fact, as I wrote in this column in March 2020, “Duterte’s ‘marching orders’ for Secretary Cimatu were ‘No corruption . . . manage the agency well and ens ure it is corruption free.’” And Cimatu delivered. He cleaned up the “decaying tourist Island of Borocay” and then began the Herculean task of cleaning up Manila Harbor, a three-year project. Both projects required cleaning up environmental and political decay. Credit goes to Cimatu and Duterte.

Unfortunately, however, I’ve since discovered that Secretary Cimatu is the exception to the rule. Other Duterte appointees have been credibly accused of illegal activities. Yet Duterte has not applied his ‘smell test’: “One whiff of corruption, you’re out.” As journalist Kurt Dela Pena point out in the title of his September 1, 2021 “Inquirer” article, “As whiff of corruption emits bad odor, Duterte is quick to defend his men.” Duterte “rushed to defend” his Secretary of Health Francisco Duque. Duterte publicly intervened in a Senate probe of Duque. The article cites two other examples of Duterte defending prominent appointees before the investigating bodies have been able to conclude and make their recommendations to him.

Perhaps the “Inquirer” gets the final word regarding Duterte’s promise to wipe out widespread corruption: “Amid all the corruption issues that plagued the Duterte administration in its over five years of reign, only two officials, along with a retired cop at the time, have been convicted of plunder” (“Inquirer” July 25, 2021).

Bob Boyer welcomes your comments/questions at Robert.boyer@snc.edu.