MANILA, Philippines—The fastest way for the public to take the fight against corruption seriously is for the government to go after the “big fish.”
This was one of the suggestions made by international anticorruption expert Tony Kwok in a lecture on corruption given at the University of the East on C.M. Recto Avenue, Manila, on Thursday afternoon.
Using this strategy, Kwok, former operations chief of the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), said he was able to help oversee a significant decrease in overt corruption in the Chinese region within three years.
“When fighting corruption, we’re fighting against public perception. When people believe the fight is genuine, they will start refusing to pay bribes,” and start publicly reporting corruption instead of taking it as “an accepted way of life,” he said.
Kwok said there was only one way to make the public believe the anticorruption fight was genuine, and that is through a “big fish” case. It would send a significant signal that there are “no sacred cows” in a country’s campaign, he explained.
He said that to investigate a big fish case, the country’s lead anticorruption agency, such as the Office of the Ombudsman in the Philippines, should have adequate resources, professional staff, and arresting and investigating power, otherwise, it would all be “a big joke.”
“Hong Kong has 900 investigators for 180,000 civil servants. The last time I asked, the Ombudsman had 37 investigators for the millions of Filipino civil servants. So of course [Filipinos] would think they can get away with [corruption] easier,” Kwok said.