17 June 2016
Tough talking President elect Rodrigo Duterte told his incoming cabinet that the administration should be free of corruption. There is nothing wrong in that. After all he was elected on an anti-corruption mandate.
There was extreme corruption in the Philippines. Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Customs and Land Transportation Office are considered to be most corrupt. Modes of corruption include graft, bribery, embezzlement, backdoor deals and nepotism.
Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, Joseph Estrada, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo were corrupt past Presidents. Jejomar Binay was formerly Vice President who was charged for corruption.
People were fed up with rampant corruption everywhere in the public service. That led to the victory of Duterte as president.
Duterte has promised to bring back capital punishment to combat crime and corruption. People are now afraid that he might go too far.
Jun Pala, a journalist and politician, who was a vocal critic of Duterte. Gunmen on a motorcycle shot him dead. His murder was not solved.
Duterte said that corrupt journalists were legitimate targets of assassination. This is not a sensible thing to do. A journalist who did not follow the rules of ethics should be punished only after due process of the law. Otherwise there will be reign of terror.
People are afraid that criminals will be eliminated without any trial. Some of the deaths will also be due to personal vendetta of someone. These are not good for the country. China imposes death penalty for corruption offences but always is commuted to life imprisonment.
In the recent years President Aquino adopted transparency on government transactions and this has somewhat reduced the amount of corruption.
It is necessary to stop corruption but it should be done on proper legal manner. But now that he has spoken out his mind, anyone indulging in corruption will think twice before taking any bribe. He starts his clean up with his own cabinet. This is good because if the top is clean the lower rungs will also become clean. The mistake the previous presidents made was that they allowed their cabinet to be corrupt. So everyone down the line became corrupt.