ACCORDING to Pulse Asia’s latest survey, an alarming 97 percent of Filipinos now believe corruption is widespread, and 59 percent see it as a “normal” part of politics.
This normalization is not just a crisis of governance but also a crisis of national conscience.
In a democracy, public trust is what keeps institutions alive.
But what happens when that trust is suffocated by decades of impunity, scandal, and systemic abuse?
The latest opinion survey offers a sobering answer: Almost all Filipinos consider corruption as too far-reaching, and more than half now see it as par for the course in Philippine politics.
This is not just a statistic but a clear warning that we must move decisively.
When corruption becomes normalized, accountability becomes optional. When citizens expect graft as a matter of course, outrage gives way to resignation. And when resignation takes root, reform dies quietly in the shadows.
The timing of this survey is no coincidence. It was conducted just days after the Sept. 21 “Trillion-Peso March,” the largest protest under the Marcos Jr. administration, sparked by revelations of massive corruption in flood control projects.
Whistleblowers allege ghost projects, rigged bidding, and billions siphoned off while communities drown in preventable floods.
In response, the President created an independent commission to investigate corruption allegations in infrastructure.
What’s most disturbing is not just the scale of corruption, but the creeping sense of inevitability.
Fifty-nine percent of Filipinos now believe corruption is simply part of how politics works here. This belief is alarming because it tells young people that integrity is unimportant, that public service is a racket, and that the system cannot be changed.
We must reject the myth that corruption is cultural or inevitable. It is not.
Rather, it is a choice enabled by weak institutions, opaque procurement, dynastic monopolies, and a lack of citizen oversight. And like any choice, it can be unmade.
This moment demands more than ad hoc investigative bodies and soundbites.
It demands structural reform: full transparency in infrastructure spending, protection for whistleblowers, participatory budgeting, and independent citizen audits.
It demands civic education that teaches the next generation not just to vote, but to question, to organize, and to hold power to account.
Most of all, it demands that we stop treating corruption as “normal.” Because the moment we accept that lie, we lose the will to fight it.
The latest survey, in fact, should be a wake-up call for government to take firm moves and file charges against those responsible for graft and corruption, no matter how high up in the official hierarchy, and sentence them to long jail terms if found guilty.
