The recent 2009 Global Corruption Barometer Report of the Transparency International (TI) showed that 77 percent of Filipino respondents thought that the current government’s actions in the fight against corruption were ineffective. This is a 13-percentage-point increase from the 64 percent registered in the TI report in 2007. The 77-percent dissatisfaction rate was also the worst registered among seven Southeast Asian countries and the fifth worst among all the 69 countries covered by the report.
The general public did not use formal channels to lodge bribery-related complaints: three-quarters of people who reported paying bribes did not file a formal complaint. About half of bribery victims interviewed did not see existing complaint mechanisms as effective. This was a view consistent regardless of gender, education, or age.
Filipino public officials and civil servants were rated as the most affected by corruption (by 35 percent of survey respondents), followed by political parties (28 percent), the legislature (26 percent), the judiciary (7 percent), the business community (3 percent), and media (1 percent).
What is pathetic is that the results indicated that respondents from low-income households were more likely to pay bribes than those from high-income households when dealing with the police, the judiciary, land services and even the education system.
The apologists of the Office of the Ombudsman of the Philippines complained that the Office had only 800 employees tasked with monitoring 5 million government employees. They seem to pass the blame to the local courts and prosecutors. They argued that the Office of the Ombudsman did not have the power to issue warrants of arrest and search warrants. They felt that the accomplishments of their Office were not being reported by the media because the press focused only on the bad news.
The common reaction of the people to the above complaints of the Office of the Ombudsman is that it should not be too apologetic about its structure. What it has is what it must work with. At present, the top leadership in the Office of the Ombudsman is very poor and the morale of its personnel very low.
See:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20090604-208704/RP-anticorruption-drive-worst-in-SEAstudy
