The Duterte administration did not fail in its anti-corruption campaign, says Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo.
“We’ve been fighting corruption and as we have seen, the President has been firing top government officials. And complaints against erring government officials have been charged in the Ombudsman and in the courts,” he said in a statement.
Panelo was reacting to the 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index report in which the Philippines placed 113th out of 180, a drop of 14 places from the country’s 99th position in 2018.
The study by Transparency International, a Berlin-based civil society organization, released last week showed that the Philippines scored 34 points on a scale where zero is “highly corrupt” and the perfect score of 100 is “very clean.”
The international average was 43 points, while the regional average of Asia Pacific was 45 points.
The findings, Panelo said, would only further fuel the government’s campaign to go after corrupt officials.
“We are in fact struggling [in our campaign] because the President’s hands are tied by the due process clause of the Constitution,” he said.
“It would be different if all of these have been appointed by the President then you can just dismiss all of them outright. You have to file charges against them,” he added.
