Corruption, referring to the use of power or high position in government for personal gain is universal. It is here and everywhere. And today it is here in the country in mind-bobbling scale. Ten billion pesos? For how long do you count that?
Is man corrupt or evil by nature?
No, man is not necessarily corrupt or evil by nature. In fact, according to Jose Ortega y Gasset in his “History as a System”, man has no nature. It is his conscious self that decides who he wants to be. Ortega says, “The stone is given its existence; it need not fight for being what it is—a stone in the field. Man has to be himself in spite of unfavorable circumstances; that means he has to make his own existence at every single moment. He is given the abstract possibility of existing, but not the reality. This he has to conquer hour after hour. Man must earn his life, not only economically but metaphysically.”
Zunxi, who live at the very end of the Zhou dynasty in China, has another idea about the nature of man. “Human nature is evil; its good derives from conscious activity. Now it is human nature to be born with a fondness for profit. Indulging this leads to contention and strife, and the sense of modesty and yielding with which one was born disappears. One is born with feelings of envy and hate, and, by indulging these, one is led into banditry and theft, so that the sense of loyalty and good faith with which he was born disappears. One is born with the desires of the ears and eyes and with a fondness for beautiful sights and sounds, and, by indulging these, one is led to licentiousness and chaos, so that the sense of ritual, rightness, refinement, and principle with which one was born is lost. Hence, following human nature and indulging human emotions will inevitably lead to contention and strife, causing one to rebel against one’s proper duty, reduce principle to chaos, and revert to violence . . . From this perspective it is apparent that human nature is evil and that its goodness is the result of conscious activity.”
To this two concepts of the nature of man, one might also add what perhaps many of us believe that man by nature is inherently good and that it is only his bad upbringing or bad environment that makes him bad as a person.
From the three ideas above, it is obvious that man has the potential to be corrupt on account of what he choose to be as in Ortega, because he is in the first place evil as in Zunxi or because although essentially good, man can be influenced by his own upbringing or environment to become bad. It is also essentially obvious from these three possible natures of man though that he can choose to be free from corruption or to be less corrupt depending on his ability to know what is good or evil and his power to control himself to do only what is right as President Benigno Aquino III said he wants us to do in his last State of the Nation Address.
But knowing that there is so much corruption in the country today, what do we do? First of all, we should know that aside from the inherent potential of man to be corrupt there is also such a thing as the immediate or proximate cause for one to become corrupt. One can mention man’s greed or the culture of the society in which he lives but I venture to say that this proximate case is more economic or financial than anything else.
Accordingly, officials in government have little incentive to do their jobs well, given their low pay scales. As such, they may delay their work or put many obstacles to extract something from people transacting with them. Therefore, one way of minimizing corruption, since it is impossible to completely eliminate, is to give higher pay to our government officials and workers equal to that of the private sector. Without this, one who is very capable and honest will only find work in the private sector thus leaving the inept and the dishonest in government.
In one experimental study I know, the results show that increasing public officials’ wages greatly reduces their corruptibility. It says that in particular, experienced low-wage public officials accept 91 percent of bribes on average, whereas high-wage public officials accept 38 percent and that moreover, high-wage public officials are less likely to choose to be corrupt. Also, I heard many times before that there’s less corruption in the government of Singapore because of the good pay their government officials and workers receive.
Another way to deter or minimize corruption in government is seeing to it that corruption when committed can be discovered by monitoring and auditing government expenditures properly. Someone must know for example that supplies procured for distribution to the intended beneficiaries are actually procured and delivered. And whether the projects to be built are actually constructed and completed according to the specifications given. Who audits and who monitors also matters, because they can possibly be corrupted especially if they come from the government with low pay, whose appointment and tenure can be influenced by the corrupt people in power.
Thus, we also need the civil society, especially the media, to help, not only in exposing shenanigans that are committed in government but in finding ways that they are prevented. In local government units, local development councils and other bodies that require civil society and non-government organizations to participate should be in place. Of late, the Department of Budget and Management has required different government agencies to involve the private sector in their budgeting process starting from budget preparation to legislation, execution and monitoring.
The problem is when the temptation is great, people outside the government can also be corrupted. It takes great courage to be free from corruption and to be an example to one’s community or society. And even if the highest example is present in the person of President Aquino, whom I have no reason to doubt, it may still take a long time to change the propensity of our people to be corrupt when an opportunity to easily become rich presents itself.