Crisis in leadership is root of PH’s corruption problem — AdDU president
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 23 Oct) — The corruption crisis in the Philippines stems from a failure of leadership deeply embedded in the culture of patronage politics, according to Fr. Karel S. San Juan, S.J., president of the Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU).
During the 3rd Annual Theological Conversation streamed on the Facebook page of AdDU on Wednesday evening, San Juan delivered a talk on “Crisis in Leadership: Interruptions and Invitations in the Philippine Context,” where he pointed out that the corruption problem is rooted in the “unbridled greed for money” by government leaders.
“This is a crisis of leadership — obviously a type of leadership that is bad, dysfunctional, corrupted, and immoral,” he said.
San Juan said that greed leads to government leaders’ addiction to power and results in their lack of accountability and responsibility.
He added that for some government leaders, “money translates to power.”
“The more money one has, the more power they can gain for themselves, their families, and their group. And sadly, this often comes with a loss of conscience, and this has been brought up by many church groups, civil society, and others,” the Jesuit priest said.
San Juan said that government workers, politicians, and bureaucrats collude with contractors and businessmen to perpetrate corruption, making it a systemic issue that operates through established “structures, processes, and procedures of government bureaucracies.”
He said corruption, such as the recent issue of anomalous flood control projects, only leads to the suffering of the people from across the country who experience severe flooding due to ghost or substandard projects.
“Corruption in infrastructure is what we’re seeing now, but there may be other aspects of corruption that we will be seeing in the next few weeks, months, and years. It is good to ask and dissect the reality and phenomenon in this pressing and angering issue in the country today,” he said.
San Juan noted that the pervasive issue of patronage politics within the country’s political structure disenfranchises the people who become dependent on politicians for basic services, who are kept poor and uncritical, and even uneducated.
“We’ve heard of politicians not favoring people who are very well educated, so they can easily be manipulated and disempowered, leading to what psychologists have called ‘learned helplessness,’ the phenomenon of the poor being very powerless in dealing with their situation resigned to their faith, and just comfortable with being dependent on those who have the power to give money, dispense money, and favor,” he said.
San Juan explained that in patronage politics, politicians engage with people, who in turn vote and pledge their loyalty to specific leaders, “and in return, through a transactional relationship, these politicians give money to the people.”
“People receive, and politicians give. It’s a give-and-take relationship of what we have been calling patronage [politics]. Therefore, this politician needs all the money that he or she can get, whether that be from pork barrel or ‘ayuda’ funds in Congress like AKAP. Confidential funds, budget insertions, and kickbacks from projects can also be used for this patronage system,” he said.
Stealing public funds that are meant for social services such as health and education means that the “people remain unserved and public trust betrayed,” he said.
San Juan said good leaders must be “effective, available, and ethical.”
“I believe we need all three to make leadership work in any society or in any system, or in any organization. In the Philippines, I think there are competent and available leaders, but many are there for the wrong reasons — greed, self-entitlement, and power, as we are seeing in the corruption issue now,” he said.
The country, he said, has leaders who are “effectively and competently good in corruption.” (Antonio L. Colina IV / MindaNews)
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