To heal the system, flush out the big fish

Corruption in public spending is no longer just a governance failure; it has become a crisis of legitimacy.

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In the Philippines, after weeks of anguished revelations in both the Senate and the House of Representatives, public outrage over anomalous flood-control projects is powerful, and rightly so. But exposure alone does not repair what has been broken. Unless citizens see justice applied evenhandedly with powerful actors in the Senate, House, Executive, and their private-sector collaborators identified, charged, and, where warranted, convicted, the same cycle of theft, impunity, and cynicism will hollow out government capacity and public trust.

SOBRA NA! TAMA NA!*

Research on corruption prevention is clear: real accountability demands more than rules and audits. A comprehensive 2023 review for Public Safety Canada distils four mutually reinforcing approaches: 1.) value-based integrity and ethical leadership; 2.) compliance mechanisms (rules, monitoring, sanctions); 3.) risk-management (corruption risk assessments, targeted safeguards); and 4.) transparency and civic participation visible and audit-able. No single technical fix suffices; meaningful change depends on a calibrated mix of culture, control, diagnostics, and public engagement.

The World Bank’s anti-corruption agenda of March 2023 strengthens this framework. It points to open contracting and e-procurement namely, beneficial-owner disclosure, stronger public financial management, sanctions and debarment regimes, and technology and standardized data for oversight. It also insists on diagnostics — mapping corruption risk by project and sector — and combining prevention, detection, and enforcement. Corruption is not merely moral decay; it undermines growth by eroding efficiency, productivity, and blocking the very goals of poverty reduction and shared prosperity.

GLOBAL PRECEDENTS AND RECENT ALARMS

These frameworks are not theoretical. Around the region, citizens are reacting when elites profit while ordinary people suffer.