Transparency International: Phl corruption perception improves

MANILA, Philippines – The global group Transparency International (TI) yesterday said the corruption perception in the Philippines has slightly improved.

TI-Philippines board member Araceli Estrada Villanueva yesterday said that from last year’s 2.4 percent, the Philippines’ score in their Corruption Perception Index (CPI) has gone up to 2.6 percent.

In their scoring system, the score zero is the most corrupt while a perfect 10 means that the country is the least corrupt or very clean. “Some say that it (.2 percent improvement) is so insignificant but for us at TI, there is a movement and the movement is not going down, it is going up. So even if the change is small, it is still going up… It may not be a leap, but we made an improvement from 2.4 to 2.6 percent,” Villanueva said.

Last year, the Philippines ranked no. 134 out of the 170 countries surveyed. This year, TI said the country landed in 129th spot out of 183 counties.

However, Villanueva said that rank 129 was not a reason to rejoice since the country’s rating last year cannot be compared to this year’s.

She said methodologies varied and the number of countries surveyed were also different.

The latest survey was reportedly conducted between December 2009 and September 2011, meaning it partly covered the term of two presidents, the last six months of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the first one and a half years of incumbent President Aquino.

Since a majority of the months covered by the survey fell during the term of Aquino, Villanueva said the credit for the .2 percent increase in country’s CPI score should go to the incumbent.

“If we go by the length of period survey, maybe it is President Aquino because (it covered) one and a half years of his tenure,” she said.

She urged Aquino to be more passionate, more aggressive and more active in curbing corruption.

The fight against corruption should begin from the country’s top leaders, she said.

Meanwhile, TI-Philippines chair retired Judge Dolores Espaol said, “The only way to improve the CPI score is for the general public to see results and experience clean governance in their everyday lives. Results manifested in concrete efforts such as convictions of high-level corruption cases, compliance to the Anti-Red Tape Act, passage of the Freedom of Information Act and pursuance of the enactment of the Whistleblower’s Protection Law, among many others.”

Villanueva added that since the CPI is based on perception, Filipinos should take this as a challenge to stop corruption.

“This is a challenge, if you are perceived to be bad you have to rise up to the challenge. As far as we are concerned, we lack the activism to fight corruption. We are not that passionate to fight corruption. We have to move out of that perception. We might be bad, but not that bad,” Villanueva said.

The TI official is also optimistic that the slight improvement of the Philippines in terms of corruption would help boost investor confidence in the country.

“This would be a positive thing because in these surveys it was not the households that were surveyed, but it was more of the businessmen and investors. It is a survey on their perception of public officials, such as if there is malversation of funds, illegal procurement and others.”

Apart from the Philippines, the four other countries that garnered a score of 2.6 are Armenia, Dominican Republic, Syria, and Honduras.

The top five countries perceived to be the least corrupt are New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Singapore, while those at the tail-end of the CPI are Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia.

But Villanueva was quick to add that this does not mean that Somalia is the most corrupt country in the world, it only landed in the bottom spot among the countries surveyed. Not all the countries in the world were surveyed. –Evelyn Macairan (The Philippine Star)