Corruption is the talk everywhere in this country, categorized among the most corrupt countries in the world, but rarely has a public offi cial been made to suffer for his misdeeds. Former President Estrada was convicted of plunder but was spared the ignominy of serving his sentence and that made grafters walk in the clouds.
The wheels of justice grind so slowly in cases involving corruption and yet Presidential Management Staff Chief Cerge Remonde points out with pride that anti-graft bodies have been established to stamp out corruption. But impotent or immobile sphinx-like bodies they must be, if not themselves permeated with the disease, for how must the soaring decibels of corruption be explained?
Here in Bicol and even Camarines Sur many development projects are tainted with corruption. For instance, a project package involving more than P170 million for the Third District of Camarines Sur immediately before the May, 2007 election was believed not implemented at all. In her visit to Masbate late last year President Arroyo herself remarked that some projects in Bicol were reported to be completed but were actually non-existent.
But what is the government doing? What are the anti-graft bodies doing? Are they instead abetting corruption or showing corruption as common-place even in handling graft cases? What is Cerge Remonde, whose office should at least discern which big ghost projects are gobbled up by crocodiles, doing?
What is everybody, anyway, doing about corruption if not just blabbering about it?
