Climate of accountability

"Corruption is never the act of just one person, as the recent of revelations of businessmen who have participated in the sale of used, overpriced helicopters to the police has shown..."

It takes an entire BARRIO to breed it!

By: Ernesto Herrera

What can President Aquino do in a year’s time? Perhaps more than anything it is this: set a climate of accountability that would hopefully define governance in this nation from hereon.

Mr. Aquino has been criticized for not being able to unveil sweeping policy initiatives. His critics rightly or wrongly keep harping on his lack of an economic agenda. But really, he is right to focus on the biggest challenge facing this nation: its inability to establish and enforce accountability.



Many people want to take on the mantle of leadership but are not prepared to accept the accountability that goes with it. Accountability is what Mr. Aquino solemnly promised when he was campaigning. It is what he talks about in all his speeches, even in his last State of the Nation Address.



The President knows only too well that accountability is what would bring back the people’s trust in their government and their leaders. It is what would empower our people to act responsibly, to believe that they have a stake in making this nation great again.



This early in Mr. Aquino’s tenure, we now find poll officers and even policemen speaking out about their participation on election fraud. Businessmen are coming out with their own revelations about rigged public contracts and government purchases, like those overpriced used helicopters bought by the police.



Indeed, all sorts of truths are being revealed—misused government charity funds, bloated government perks, shenanigans in the public gaming agency, and what have you.



Last week, Senator Miguel Zubiri resigned amid a controversial and still unresolved electoral protest involving him and Aquilino Pimentel III, an act that for nothing else should be praised for its delicadeza, something that has been sorely missing in the practice of politics here in the country during last decade or so, but which people now seem to expect as the norm from their politicians and public servants, from the President down to the government clerk. Again, this is because the President has set the tone.



What we are seeing is something as consequential and important as the priority measures discussed in any Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council Meeting. We are seeing a historic shift in governance. We are seeing the foundations of accountability being established.



Mr. Aquino vowed that all public contracts would be scrutinized, their negotiations made

transparent, every cent poured into them properly accounted for. Public servants would live up to their names and owe their tenure to the people they serve. They would be our servants and not our masters. Elections, the bedrock of democracy, would be fair and honest.



Most of all, he vowed that past misdeeds would not be buried and forgotten for the sake of unity and moving on, for doing so—letting the wrongdoers get away with their criminal behavior—would only ensure that our sordid history of rigged elections and public contracts, of corrupt activities and official misconduct, would be repeated in the future.



We now have a new Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales who seems intent on doing her job to run after graft and corruption. The other day she ordered the hiring of more than a hundred lawyers to serve as graft investigation and prosecution officers and assistant special prosecutors.



We expect corruption efforts to step up considerably in the coming months and for these efforts to breathe new life into existing anti-corruption laws, which were practically ignored or selectively enforced in the past administration.



The Justice department and its investigative agencies too are devoting more resources to anti-corruption prosecution and are expected to yield more and bigger cases.



The administration should ensure the enactment of the long-pending and much-needed Whistle Blowers Act and Freedom of Information Act as these will surely help the prosecutors in their ability to use government resources to bring successful prosecutions in a timely manner.



The President asked for our cooperation in fighting corruption and we should respond. Corruption is never the act of just one person, as the recent of revelations of businessmen who have participated in the sale of used, overpriced helicopters to the police has shown. It takes a village, if not a country, to breed it.



Good governance and clean government is not just the responsibility of the administration. We help create it by our own individual actions. As the President stressed in his recent State of the Nation Address, we are all accountable.



Politics, indeed, would be much better served with individual acts of commitment to do the right thing in all official transactions, and this would be best demonstrated by a President himself, a President who practices what he preaches. It all starts and ends with a President who can live up to his promise to be ethical and honest.



Now if only all of the President’s people can do the same.