MERGED: Most Corrupt Government Agencies in the Philippines Today?

[mitch_anne]

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murag tanan man,but still i will site specific example:

NSO Lapu-lapu City Hall - wala padaw ako NSO na marriage kay 10 months paman, but hatag langdaw ko ug 1k para madali.harap harapan gyud oi hehehe since front desk manto ang babaye na tiguwang. but hantod ron wala pa na abot hehehe


Post Office - Lapu-lapu -

[mitch_anne]

naa pa post office - nagkuha ko ug postal id. i already pay sa uban with receipt na cya ha. then ig human pa pic ask nasad 50 pesos pa notaryo daqw.toink wala na resibuhay.

[finchy18]

Many....... all branches of LTO, BIR, and no one beats CUSTOMS!

[grovestreet]

tnan man tingali. walay pili.

[mannyamador]

Office of the President!

The Senate found out how the Department of Agriculture funds were diverted for Arroyo's 2004 campaign. Now THAT is real corruption on a grand scale!

[casablanca]

really, what's the point in enumerating the corrupt govt. agencies? even the barangay level has its own brand of corruption. it's a known fact. but corruption is two-way process. it will not thrive without our participation. ngano corrupt man ang customs? kay daghan man pud smugglers gusto magpalusot sa ilang contrabando. ngano corrupt man ang BIR? kay daghan man pud dili gusto mobayad sa saktong buhis. ngano corrupt man ang LTO? kay arte man kaayo ta, gusto nato malukat dayon atong lisensya nga wa nay hasol. ila rang gi-take advantage ang ato pud mismong pagka-corrupt. naay modawat ug lagay kay naa man puy mohatag ug lagay. so patas ra diay tang tanan after all.

[ronaYo]

really, what's the point in enumerating the corrupt govt. agencies? even the barangay level has its own brand of corruption. it's a known fact. but corruption is two-way process. it will not thrive without our participation. ngano corrupt man ang customs? kay daghan man pud smugglers gusto magpalusot sa ilang contrabando. ngano corrupt man ang BIR? kay daghan man pud dili gusto mobayad sa saktong buhis. ngano corrupt man ang LTO? kay arte man kaayo ta, gusto nato malukat dayon atong lisensya nga wa nay hasol. ila rang gi-take advantage ang ato pud mismong pagka-corrupt. naay modawat ug lagay kay naa man puy mohatag ug lagay. so patas ra diay tang tanan after all.

Your making your analogy as if this subject is as complicated as the chicken and egg issue...
While I agree that corruption is a 2-way traffic, BUT the Gov't and it's agencies has bigger responsibilituies over us... They shouldn't be accepting bribes, suhol, regalo, padangog, lagay etc! Actually nowadays, these people in the gov't are actually the ones corrupting the public! Du-ulon jud ka ug Mangayo jud ug suhol!!! looy ka kung di ka muhatag kay they will find ways to pin you down!
Corruption is a way of life na sa atung gobyerno... kitang ordinaryong tawo isn't living a corrupt lifestyle, but oftentimes we are FORCED to indulge in a corrupt lifestyle specially when we deal with gov't offices and agencies, Corruption happens when we interacts with the Gov't...
Other sectors of our society don't have a corrupt ways of doing things, ang Gobyerno lang jud!

[mannyamador]

People are FORCED by the government to condone or engage in corruption.

Look at the LTO. If you don't pay, they make you wait for a license or sometimes you don't get it at all.

Look at Customs. If you don't pay, you can't get your goods out of the pier (or they make you wait till perishable goods rot).

Look at GMA, giving brown bags stuffed with money even to clean government officials (good thing they told the public about her bribes).

Look at her lapdogs, who condone corruption so their idol can stay in power. They end up encouraging or protecting corruption.

[cottonmouth]

Not everything is bad...spread the good news!

Quote:

RP economy to grow amid world recession
Economist sees GDP growth of 4.5% in 2008


Agence France-Presse
First Posted 16:11:00 11/11/2008


MANILA, Philippines -- The Philippine economy will slow down due to the worldwide recession but it will still grow, with some sectors even showing surprising strength, an economist forecast Tuesday.

Victor Abola, program director of the School of Economics of the University of Asia and the Pacific, projected gross domestic product growth in 2008 at 4.5 percent with 4.0-percent growth next year.

This will be a sharp slowdown from the 7.2-percent growth posted last year but will be far better than the minimal or even negative growth projected for developed countries, Abola said.

The likely effects of the world financial crisis on the Philippines will be a decline or even withdrawal of foreign investments in the stock market.

Philippine financial institutions are not too exposed to the financial turmoil and those that have been affected have already made this public, Abola added.

"We won't have a credit crunch as banks have plenty of money," he forecast.

The mining and tourism sectors, which have been rallying in recent years, will suffer a decline as foreigners and investors stay home, said Abola.

Philippine exports will suffer as their main markets -- the developed countries -- undergo an economic downturn.

However, the business process outsourcing sector -- made up of call centers and other backroom operations -- could see a resurgence with the Philippines grabbing 20 percent of total demand from the present level of about 10 percent.

India, which has about 50 percent of the world market, is becoming too expensive and is experiencing a shortage in manpower even as more foreign companies seek to outsource operations to save money, Abola said.

The construction sector could also see a boom as the cost of building materials falls and the government resorts to infrastructure spending to jumpstart the economy, he added.

The eight million Filipinos working overseas will likely not see too many job losses due to the recession in developed countries but their remittances will increase in value as the local currency depreciates, he said.

The remittances of these Filipinos are a major pillar supporting the economy.

Inflation will likely rise to an average 9.6 percent this year but will slow to 5.5 percent in 2009, Abola said, adding that a recession in the United States might end by the third quarter of 2009 and this would lift the Philippine economy.

But he warned that the Philippine government should stop defending the local currency and be careful about deficit spending.

He said revenue collections were still not rising despite plans to increase spending.

Domestic demand can make up for lower export-led growth, Abola said, adding that "the government has to have a policy that encourages people to invest and spend."

[mannyamador]

Spread the good news and ignore the suffering. Yeah, ssoooo smart.


Robbing us blind
By Raul Pangalangan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:38:00 11/07/2008
Robbing us blind - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

They’ve got it all wrong with Joc-Joc Bolante. It’s as if it’s our burden to explain why government agencies must hear Bolante’s testimony, and if they find a legal excuse to avoid doing so, then that’s the end of it. It’s as if it’s all a question of procedure, of finding a proper forum to receive Bolante’s truth (or his version of it). Without a forum, there is no truth, and therefore the fertilizer scam never happened. That’s legal formalism to the hilt, but alas, that is the version of the rule of law that Filipinos have internalized.

No, different forums may hear Bolante, each acting for its own institutional purposes—for instance, the Office of the Ombudsman in order to prosecute the guilty, and the Senate committees inquiring in aid of legislation. The only proper technique of evasion is for Bolante to show that his constitutional rights are at stake. In other words, it is for Bolante to explain why he cannot be made to testify, not because the process is wanting but because the process would violate a constitutionally protected right. To use the familiar boxes of legal academia, the problem is not with the Separation of Powers in Constitutional Law 1; the problem, if at all, can only be with the Bill of Rights in Constitution Law 2.

This is not a question of procedure on the obscure workings of the checks-and-balances among competing branches of government or the internal wrangling among Senate committees. This is a question of substance. Our starting point is the constitutional duty of the “Government [to] secure to ourselves and our posterity … the blessings of … democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth.” The Constitution further says: “Public office is a public trust. Public officers … must, at all times, be accountable to the people ….” Such ringing rhetoric: “democracy,” “regime of truth,” and “public trust.” And here we are, trying to ferret out the truth about the manipulation of an election campaign using public funds, and we’ve got public officials falling over one another to gag the star witness, tagged by the Senate as the “brains and implementor” of the entire scam.

The real problem however lies not in the technical maneuverings of the lawyers. It lies rather in the Filipino public’s patience if not enchantment with these legal techniques of truth-avoidance. In other words, shouldn’t the Filipino public simply say: Enough! Can someone just tell us what really happened with the missing funds? Just the facts, please.

Let us start with Bolante’s arrival statement: “Now that I am back, I assure you that I will answer any and all accusations at the proper forum. …. Now that I am back, I shall now fulfill my promise of saying my piece, giving my side of the story.”

And what have we done with that categorical, no-ifs-ands-or-buts promise? We have parsed and reduced it to the key phrase “at the proper forum.” We then start debating: “What is the proper forum—the Ombudsman or the Senate?”

Malacañang obviously prefers the Ombudsman. But the Ombudsman has sat on this case for the past four years. The Senate website contains the statement of Sen. Mar Roxas that documents two resolutions by the investigating lawyers of the Ombudsman charging Bolante with misusing a P432-million fertilizer fund under the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA — Golden Abundant Harvest) program in 2003 and with diverting P728 million in 2004. Significantly, the person who filed the 2003 charges—the former Department of Agriculture resident ombudsman Marlene Esperat—has since been murdered in cold blood before her own children and in her own home in Sultan Kudarat province.

Given that record, isn’t the Filipino public entitled to hear the truth before the Senate blue ribbon committee? After all, its official name is Committee on Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations, and its jurisdiction covers “all matters relating to, including investigation of, malfeasance, misfeasance and nonfeasance in office” by public officers?

The irony is that this is not the first time that it took a foreign government to enforce our rules when our own Philippine authorities have failed. The most famous, of course, is the human rights case filed in Honolulu against Ferdinand Marcos, wherein the victims—unable to secure damages in their own country—turned to a foreign court for relief.

Remember the Armed Forces comptroller, Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia, from whom the US Customs and Border Patrol seized $100,000 in 2003, and who was found to have transferred over $.5 million since 1993 and own $1.4 million in real estate. More recently, it took the Russians to stop the “Euro Generals” when former Philippine National Police comptroller Eliseo de la Paz was held at the Moscow International Airport last Oct. 11 for carrying 105,000 euros or P6.93 million. That sum is way beyond the amount of foreign currency he would have been allowed to bring into Russia. But it was likewise way above the Philippines’ own foreign currency limits, yet the Euro Generals were able to slip through the Naia. Even more embarrassing, in Transparency International’s rankings, Russia (at No. 147) actually ranks as even more corrupt than the Philippines (at No. 141).

And now Joc-joc Bolante. Summoned by the Senate, he fled to the United States, and it took the US authorities to cancel his visa and to arrest and detain him. It took US courts, in a decision written by the famous Judge Richard Posner of the US Court of Appeals and former law professor at the University of Chicago (where President-elect Barack Obama used to teach Constitutional Law), to deny his application for political asylum. The irony is that it has taken foreign governments and foreign courts to do what Filipinos should have done for themselves.