Fight against corruption can be won

CORONEL says appointing the right people sends a strong message that the government wants to curb corruption.

Sheila Coronel, an award-winning  investigative journalist, was home from New York City recently to talk about corruption.

Coronel had looked at and written about corruption in varying forms when she was with the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), which she cofounded.

Through PCIJ, Coronel and colleagues established, in reports dating back to 1989, the need for investigative journalism in the fight against corruption.

Although she has spent the last six years teaching investigative reporting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York, Coronel has kept an eye on goings-on in the Philippines.

She remains an involved observer via the Internet which, Coronel said, had become a valuable tool in monitoring corruption in the Philippines and elsewhere.

The attention she has given to the problem has apparently convinced the recipient of the 2003 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts that “corruption can be curbed.”

But in her lecture “Fighting Corruption: Can The Philippines Succeed?” one of the events leading up to the centenary next year of her alma mater, the College of the Holy Spirit on Mendiola, Coronel stressed that unwavering public attention was needed to battle corruption.

Setting an example

That President Aquino “is not a thief makes a big difference” in his administration’s anticorruption effort, said Coronel.

“The President sets the tone for the rest of the government,” she explained.

Coronel said changes in the way government contracts were negotiated had become noticeable in the Departments of Education and Public Works and Highways, two agencies that had a reputation for being corrupt.

“I’m not saying (corruption) is gone.  But back in the 1990’s, up to 65 percent of textbook allocations went to corruption. There were numerous ghost deliveries because nobody was watching whether the books were delivered.  Now, there is better monitoring.  Citizens are more engaged in the effort,” she noted.

Coronel agreed with observations that reforms in the higher levels had yet to trickle down to bureaus and local governments.

She said one quick way to measure corruption was the speed by which drivers’ licenses and business permits were issued.

The longer it took to get those suggested cash was needed to speed up the process.

Coronel, who wrote for the Philippine Panorama magazine during the Marcos years, said corruption that began during that period pulled back the Philippines so that it was now lagging behind most of its Southeast Asian neighbors.

Apart from staying in power indefinitely, the dictator made things worse by centralizing all power unto himself, she said. Checks and balances provided by the legislature and the judiciary were nonexistent so it became too easy to steal.

Coronel said the Philippines had already lost so many decades because of corruption.  “Right now we’re just catching up with the rest of Southeast Asia especially Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.”

But while things were moving better now, Coronel said they could move faster.

Powerful message

She said putting the right people in an agency sent a powerful message. She cited the appointment of Christian Monsod as chair and Haydee Yorac as commissioner of the Commission on Elections.

“Comelec was one of the most corrupt agencies during the time of Marcos.  It underwent reform during the time of (President) Cory Aquino. But the question is sustainability. Comelec was very good in 1992 but now we have (Lintang) Bedol,” she pointed out.

Coronel blamed patronage politics for recurring problems.  Even if faces change, operating within the same corrupt system could transform the newcomers into the monsters they replaced, she said.

In an interview later, Coronel lauded the impeachment of  Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona although she said she was “of two minds” about the process.

Corona needed to be removed since his appointment was marred by irregularity.  But the process that brought it about and the risks it took to impeach him might have caused damage to the institutions involved—the Senate that tried him, the House of Representatives that prosecuted him and the judiciary he headed.

“It was a victory for Noynoy (the President) and his anticorruption drive.  But I think we must move beyond political trials as a way of addressing problems… People might think it was political vendetta, as Corona was saying,” Coronel said.

And she asked: “How sure are (we) that the successor (to Corona) would be better?  I’m worried about the message that replacing one who did wrong is enough when it’s actually much more complicated than that.  It’s not just a question of putting good people in leadership positions.”

“Political trials can get the people’s attention.  But when it comes to the everyday, like monitoring textbook deliveries,   it’s more difficult because it’s not so dramatic. Hindi siya show biz,” she noted.

Challenging citizens

“The challenge is how to keep people engaged in the process that’s not dramatic; that involves building something and not just putting someone down,” Coronel said.

The executive director of Columbia’s Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism is teaching her students the lessons and skills she has learned.

“There are certain skills that are teachable: getting documents, analyzing documents, where to get information, the use of documents and public records to prove wrongdoing.  Second (is) investigative interviewing which means trying to get secrets out of people, getting sources to give you information that otherwise would remain secret or hidden,” she said.

Coronel noted that the Philippine government was “wired” enough for concerned citizens to take a look at its transactions online.  Technology, Coronel said, could be a useful tool in detecting irregularity.

In the preonline era, the PCIJ hired interns to encode the statements of assets, liabilities and net worth of congressmen dating back to 1986.

This was how the book “The Rulemakers: How The Wealthy and Well-Born Dominate Congress” that delved into the tangle of umbilical cords connecting wealthy families, politics and big business was researched. Coronel edited and coauthored the book.

Coronel said, in her new job, she was “learning a lot of new things that I would not have the opportunity to learn here.”

These included the use of technology in journalism, the changing business models and the rise of “digital-only” news outlets.

“Journalism is changing very fast, not just in terms of formats from print to digital but also the ways we do reporting.  The ways we tell stories. The way we engage the audience, the way we create communities,” Coronel said.

She said there were  many changes in journalism in the US that she was learning.