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EARLY this week an illustrated lexicon on corruption was launched
at the Popular Book store by the Center for People Empowerment in
Governance (Cenpeg). The book titled Corruptionary is the humorous
(but no less serious) counterpart to the scholarly Dissecting
Corruption: Philippine Perspectives also issued by Cenpeg last
year.
Why two books on the subject? And why not? The
Philippines has the “grim reputation” of being the second most
corrupt country in Southeast Asia, according to expatriate
businessmen who lament the fact that they find it harder to do
business in the Philippines. The London-based Transparency International
(TI) has consistently ranked the Philippines in the bottom 40
percent from 2001 to 2007 among the more corrupt countries of the
world.
Seventy-two percent of Filipinos see their
government corrupt, according to a Social Weather Station survey in
1998. Has there been a diminution or increase of this perception?
The Office of the Ombudsman admits that at least P 200 billion of
the national budget is lost annually to corruption.
Temario Rivera in his introduction to Dissecting
Corruption notes that two of our presidents, Marcos and Estrada,
have made it to the all-time list of most corrupt leaders, together
with Mobuto of Zaire, the Duvaliers (father and son) of Haiti,
Suharto of Indonesia, Stroessner of Paraguay, and Somoza of
Nicaragua.
When asked by a reporter about Pandora’s box
in reference to a reported scam, a top Palace aide said he didn’t
know Pandora’s box. This box could be a metaphor of the times if
it means the spewing forth from the regime the many corruption
scandals and crises. For the optimist, however, Hope still lies at
the bottom of PB. But will Hope emerge in the manner of Yeats’
“rough beast, its hour come at last, slouching towards Bethlehem
to be born?”
Edited by Bobby Tuazon, Dissecting Society
asserts that “the problem of entrenched and unbridled corruption
in government and in the boardrooms and mansions of the nation’s
elite poses a continuing burden on the Filipino people.” It traces
systematic corruption to the legacy of colonialism from the first
U.S.-installed Commonwealth government of Manuel L. Quezon to the
present.
The editor holds that “corruption arises
because the state is treated as one big business enterprise for
extracting profit. . . a phenomenon inherent in a political system
where the concept and practice of governance revolve around how
political leaders and top bureaucrats, in collaboration with the
local elite and foreign interests, abuse their positions of power to
amass wealth.”
For a deeper analysis, Cenpeg, IBON Foundation,
and Bayan held in 2006 a national conference on corruption, with the
late Haydee Yorac as keynote speaker. The papers presented
constitute the bulk of Dissecting Society, touching on corruption in
governance, the military, privatization, fiscal matters, media,
cronyism, and bureaucrat capitalism.
Corruptionary, on the other hand, enriches the
“hermeneutic and semiotic features” of an endemic practice, in
the words of Ronnie V. Amorado who teaches in Davao. This unusual
dictionary on corruption thus puts together and defines “various
words, texts, tags, signs and symbols used to refer to corruption in
various contexts and usages.”
The reader should be familiar with many of the
word entries. idioms and word-play plus examples given in dialogue
form, but will encounter some new ones including those provided by
witnesses in the broadband scandal. The illustrations by Fidel L. de
la Torre are apropos and amusing. The book by itself could be
entertaining but has a way of making us see ourselves as victim,
observer or even participant in the culture of corruption. What
could follow is a kind of epiphany, hopefully leading to
anti-corruption advocacy.
U.P. Manila students under Prof. Doroteo Abaya
helped gather material for the book, conceptualized by Evita Jimenez
and edited by dramatist Bonifacio Ilagan. Vice-Chancellor Josefina
Tayag of U.P. Manila has endorsed Corruptionary for inclusion in the
Centennial Publications of the U.P. System this year.
National Artist for Literature Bienvenido
Lumbera remarked: “Ang libro . . . ay nakakatawa, nakakalungkot,
at nakapanghihilakbot. Isa itong tanghalan, kumbaga, na
nagpapamalas kung gaano kalawak at kalalim ang problema ng tiwaling
pamamahala.”
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