‘Tanim-bala’ and OFWs

I HAVE always been treated well at our airports through my many years of traveling so that I could have taken comfort in the DOTC’s pronouncement that victims of the “tanim-bala” scam comprised but a small percentage of the total amount of passengers passing through NAIA. But neither logic nor superstition would give any weight to this argument. Thieves are not the most common of men, but they are assigned the most terrible depths in Hell, to punishments more terrible than the expletives of Mayor Duterte.

I thought this tactic to explain away government irregularities had gone out of fashion years ago. Before, we used to excuse the morass corruption has brought the country to by citing how much more corrupt were our neighboring governments and societies. But how far ahead of us have they gone since in economic growth and in the fight against corruption?