By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
Corruption is now the byword everywhere—for the phenomenon is everywhere, from top to bottom.
I once had a boss in Makati City who often came up with the right witty remarks. One time he tasked me to work on a case. Before filing the it, I asked him, “Are we gonna win this case?” Of course, he knew what I meant. That is, if things were already arranged. He said, “Yes, we are gonna win it.”
The next question that came from me was, “How? On the merits?” With a big laugh he retorted, “On the money!”
Public works contractors have their own jargon. When there is a contract to be bid out, the question that they ask each other is, “How much is the SOP?” The term SOP is not standard operating procedure but standard grease money to be paid those in the government agency in-charge of the project and that will award it to the winning bidder.
Sometimes though, the contractors would cooperate and no one would bid or that they will agree for one to win the bid who will pay his fellow contractors 3 to 5% each. With that arrangement the winning bid would be a bit high to take care of everybody’s share and also the SOP.
The other day, an official from the PACC (Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission) said that many congressmen are involved in corruption at the DPWH. Then he relented when a hue and cry was raised by congressmen and said that not all but some. Actually almost all of the congressmen are involved. They can readily cow DPWH officials to award contracts to their fair haired boys from which they will get 10 to 35% of the value of the contracts. Such congressmen can cause the removal of the DPWH officials who resist or cause their transfer to some remote area like Tawii-Tawi. So what options do the hapless DPWH officials have? Better to have a share from the loot.
The result of such corruption are substandard work.
Some politicians are even more brazen. One I know who was a political kingpin in his province maneuvered the province to borrow from a government bank more than a hundred million for some road project. It would be paid through the internal revenue share of the province. Not even a substandard road was finished. It turned out to be a ghost project.
Another political kingpin in his province had been doing the same. He would corner all the public works projects, some would be ghost and others would be substandard. He would call any contract to whom a project was assigned and who did a good job to ask him, “Why did you do your work well? If you keep on doing that, we will end up doing no other work. A bad work means the result will be destroyed prematurely so we will have again a new project. We will come back and do it again and be paid again.”
For these two politicians we always wrote about karma but they thought it was beyond them. Both of them later suffered a stroke. It was called “untimely demise.”
On karma, I remember our male messenger in Metro Manila way back when talking with another messenger of the nearby office. I overheard them talking of beautiful prostitutes and how much they would pay. Then I asked them, “Hindi ba kayo natatakot mag ka AIDS?” There answer was, “Tsaka na lang namin isipin yon. Bahala na.”
I guess, that might the thinking of politicians and others involved in corruption. Never mind the consequences. Perhaps the only difference is that corrupt people think that they can beat any perceived consequence.
No one can beat karma. Good deeds result in good karma. Bad deeds result in bad karma. It will always ripen, in due time.
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