MANILA, Philippines - Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on Thursday
warned the youth against potential candidates in 2016 who will likely commit
plunder and corruption if elected to office.
In a speech at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila, Santiago
reminded the youth that the country will enter into the campaign period for the
2016 elections by the end of this year.
"With so many pending cases for plunder and corruption
against high-profile political leaders, common sense dictates that as scholars,
we need to examine the culture of corruption: its sources, its mind-sets, and
whether the candidates we vote for might present a profile of corruption as a
work in progress," Santiago said.
Santiago said corruption in the Philippines is "schematic
because it has become a routine practice in the conduct of daily
business."
"This is why it is of the utmost importance to choose the
best possible president and other national officials in the 2016
elections," Santiago said.
Santiago urged the youth to examine candidates with logic and
reason and ensure that they are equipped with a record of academic and
professional excellence and achievements recognized on the national or even
international level.
The senator did not name
names but she enumerated the traits of a corrupt official that the public
should watch out for:
Machiavellianism, which
refers to a mind-set characterized by manipulation and the need for power.
Narcissism, which refers
to an inflated sense of self-importance and grandiosity;
Subclinical psychopathy,
which results from an aggregate of maladaptive trait deficits linked to
antisocial deviance.
Weak moral identity and
primitive moral thinking as exhibited by the candidate who values personal
loyalty over formal rules and does not distinguish between organizational and
personal goals.
Santiago said candidates
prone to plunder are "highly neurotic" individuals who also exhibit
the following future orientation, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty
avoidance and social dominance orientation.
She also warned against
politicians with moral disengagement.
"Sometimes this
person commits an act of corruption by morally disengaging himself from the
corruption by justifying the act using palliative comparisons," Santiago
said.
"For example, the
person linked to plunder will continue to receive kickbacks, on the reasoning
that the kickback is very little compared with earnings of a convicted
plunderer," she added.
Santiago believes that
the most notorious act of plunder in the country is the abuse of the pork
barrel system.
Santiago lamented that
the Philippines was ranked 94th in the 2013 Corruption Perception Index despite
having the highest number of anti-corruption measures in Asia.
She said the next
president can help eliminate corruption by taking certain actions such as
providing more protection for whistle-blowers, granting more transparency and
access to information and strengthening the country's weak political party
systems.
The senator said the
next president should also reduce the involvement of politicians in appointment
systems and reduce the excessive power of the executive branch.
(philstar.com)
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