DOF launches new website as part of anticorruption drive

THE DEPARTMENT of Finance yesterday officially launched a website dubbed Pera ng Bayan (People’s Money) to enlist the public’s active support for the Aquino administration’s campaign against corruption.

The website, www.perangbayan.com, is linked with Facebook and Twitter accounts and also enables syndication through feeds in RSS format—an Internet technology meant for widespread dissemination of content.

Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima announced the launch of the website Thursday night during a meeting of the Manila Overseas Press Club held at the Hotel Intercontinental Manila in Makati City.

Purisima said that the website was aimed at getting the public involved in the government’s efforts of fighting tax evaders, smugglers, as well as erring officials and employees of the Bureaus of Internal Revenue and Customs.

“People power is at the heart of the Aquino administration,” the finance chief said Friday. “In the days to come, we will continue to develop ways in which we can enjoin the public in being proactive managers of the public’s funds.”

Purisima said the poor have the biggest stake in anticorruption efforts since they were the ones hurt most when taxes and customs duties are not paid.

“Every peso of tax evaded is another child without a textbook, another soldier without a pair of boots, another pregnant mother without access to a proper clinic,” he said.

“Every container smuggled into our shores, is a peso less for a stronger police force to secure our streets for our children, [and] for better roads and trains to ease the burden of travel,” he added.

Pera Ng Bayan harks back to the late 1970s in China when, following the death of Mao Zedong, activists were encourage to criticize abuses in government by placing posters on a so-called “Democracy Wall.”

The homepage shows an old-fashioned, classroom-type black chalkboard on which a person is about to write something.

Visitors to the website can file a report expressing either praise or complaint by clicking icons that say “Pasado” (for praise) and “Reklamo” (complaint).

Written at the lower right hand corner of the web page are the words “Talasalitaan (vocabulary): Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap”—President Benigno C. Aquino III’s campaign slogan.

Aside from the BIR and the BOC, the campaign also covers other agencies that are part of the DOF—Bureau of Treasury, Bureau of Local Government Finance, Millennium Challenge Account Philippines/Cooperative Development Authority, Privatization and Management Office, Insurance Commission, National Tax Research Center, Central Board of Assessment Appeal, Philippine Deposit Insurance Commission and Philippine Export-Import Credit Agency.

The reports filed are not shown to the public, but a web page shows a counter to monitor the number of filings.

“It is through participative mechanisms such as these that we hope could provide people an option to be proactive,” Purisima said. “But of course the best way for everyone to help the Aquino administration is to pay the right taxes.” –Ronnel Domingo, Philippine Daily Inquirer