Church against corrupt politicians
Manila (AsiaNews) In the Philippines corruption in government and state institutions is an open secret and the Filipino Church wants to put a stop to it. Although one cannot precisely know how extensive corruption in the country is, it exists and the citizenry knows it. Because citizens cannot fight against those in power hardly anything is being done against it.
According to a World Bank report the government lost about 1.2 trillion pesos (about US$ 31.5 billion) from corruption over the last 25 years. Even former president Joseph Estrada (see photo) admitted in 1999 that about 20 per cent of government infrastructure spending went to unscrupulous individuals or politicians.
A concrete example of a dubious project is a "solar dryer" project (a cemented area to dry grains) in a town in the Quezon province (southern Luzon). "There are receipts showing payment of materials for the project," local councillor John Paul Buñag told AsiaNews. "But we still have not seen the dryer nor do we know whether it exists at all."
Funds for such projects are granted by the national government to local government in the form of IRA (Internal Revenue Allocation). The IRAs represent 40 per cent of the national internal revenue taxes allocated to the Local Government Units, 20 per cent of which goes to towns and villages. Unfortunately these funds are also mismanaged by corrupt local officials.
The National Secretariat for Social Action (NASSA)-Justice & Peace of the Bishops' Conference launched an IRA Watch campaign to curb corruption through grassroots supervision and the participation of Basic Ecclesial Communities.
"The IRA is very important for our town," Buñag said. "It consists of 27 million pesos per year and is bigger than our town's budget."
With public support, NASSA seeks to scrutinize the amount of IRA funds transferred to the towns, participate in drafting local development plans, urge town officials to inform citizens of local development plans, guarantee transparency in IRA-funded projects, monitor all the IRA-funded projects and inform the public of other components of IRA spending. Finally, NASSA wants the citizenry to launch actions against erring local government officials.
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