Learning Tasks 1: Short-answer response What is corruption and how does it happen? Why is it still prevalent in the Filipino society? Corruption can be defined as a person’s way to increase their resources dramatically, be it in the form of money, power, or properties, by manipulating those around them through materialistic offerings or bribery. Corruption has many forms, like bribery for votes, scams by overpricing and using the country’s resources for personal gain. It can be utilized by the person in any way, depending on how it will benefit them. According to Joy Aceron, simple corruption means the use of public means for private gains. Concerning that, many laws and policies have been made to eradicate corruption, yet it is still prevalent in our society. And, this is due to the lack of actions of the people in stopping it. There are many plans and mechanisms to combat it, but still, people do not put it into action. People never learn from their mistakes because they tend to repeat the same mistake twice. That allows and legitimizes bribery of votes, which puts a corrupt politician in a position and lets them have power. And this happens over and over again, and then history repeats itself. This makes politician abused their power because people tend to be allowing it. According to Joy Aceron, our country is weak because of our poor justice and accountability system. We cannot implement and regulate our own law to put those corrupt in jail and eradicate this ubiquitous corruption issue. She also emphasizes that to combat corruption, it requires democratic institutional and political reform. Overall, corruption will still be a pervasive issue today and until the next generation because of the lack of actions of the people. Sometimes, it is not the one whose corruption is to blame. Nevertheless, it is the people letting and normalizing corruption as if it's part of our daily basis. Remember that the change is within us; it starts with our wise decision and proper actions. What is the role of accountability in fighting corruption? "Corruption in the Philippines has almost turned into a norm in Philippine Political culture." (Aceron, 2018) In a one-on-one interview conducted by Far Eastern University about "Fighting corruption through citizen action for accountability," Ms. Joy Aceron caught our attention on a statement she said; corruption in our country has almost been considered to be a norm, which many Filipinos would agree and testify with all the everyday corruption that has been happening in our country. Until today, corruption in the Philippines has been rampant, making our justice and accountability system one of the weakest states and was also named as under a state of impunity. As a result, many Filipinos began to distrust the Justice System in the Philippines that is why even the ordinary Filipinos, non-government research organizations has risen to create reforms with the help of our Sociologist and Political Scientists to fight and resolve the issue of corruption in the Philippines and even on other parts of the world. One of the best reforms that have been made to fight corruption was instilling accountability. Since many organizations have arisen to combat corruption, one of the most known organizations in the Philippines was The Government watch Philippines, also known as G-watch. G-Watch was established in 2000 to respond to many corruption scandals involving government officials in the Philippines and aims to enable ordinary citizens to fight corruption. To add, G-watch also aims to contribute to the deepening of democracy through the scaling of accountability and citizen empowerment. Accountability would be much more accessible by empowering and fueling the citizens' knowledge about the Philippines corruption. By holding officials accountable for their wrongdoing, such as corruption, it would be much easier to eliminate factors that affect the growth and welfare of the country. Moreover, on the brighter side, accountability in good governance plays a crucial role in creating good governance activities to improve public confidence in government performances. In conclusion, transparency and accuracy to the public play hand in hand in playing a significant role in holding one accountable for their wrongdoings. Together, transparency and accountability improve public engagements, betterment of government responsiveness and thereby strengthen and enrich the democratic process in the Philippines.
