What’s a recent government project that may seem overpriced or ill-conceived? Does anybody’s name come to mind when the phrase “favored contractor” is used?
It is easy to be provoked, swayed and distracted by the many things happening in our country today. Filipinos seem unable to tell that some issues are underlying, systemic problems, some are preventable products of hasty decisions or pronouncements, while some are plain entertainment fodder.
We are given to following scandal, not realizing that what is more scandalous is that we can actually do something concrete and consistent about the ills that plague us—only we’re not doing them.
An example would be the messy and often mystifying process of procurement by government entities. It is widely believed that government contracts provide great opportunities for corruption. In the meeting of demand (by government) and supply (by contractors), details are either not readily available to the public, and if even if they are, they are shrouded in technical language or dizzying detail.
Hence, while we acknowledge this fact, nothing is ever substantially done to correct the situation.
Certainly, an “ordinary” Filipino would not have the capacity or inclination to get to the bottom of whether the implementation of a project by a government entity was all clean and above-board, without the shady undertones.
Perhaps one will not, but civil society groups and media organizations can.
At a conference organized by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism this week, one of the breakout topics for participating journalists was reporting government contracts. Speakers from the Commission on Audit, the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System and PCIJ shed light on what reporters should look for—and where to look—in investigating contracts. To be sure, not all the information one may need is available online. In the absence of a freedom of information law, we may still be subject to the unwillingness of government employees to make data available. But it is already possible to begin with what is there, and even more possible to detect red flags that may lead to further probing.
The notion is that government contracts are always shrouded in mystery and it takes superhuman sleuthing to get to the bottom of them. The job is difficult, no doubt, but not impossible.
Corruption thrives in secrecy—or in the wrong idea that most information is privileged or not readily accessible. Developing a general curiosity about contracts and how much they deviate from prescribed standards seems a more constructive—albeit less hysterical—way of fighting corruption than raising hell on social media, only to move on as swiftly to the next big scandal.