Dominic L.

Romero Reflection Paper ACCA109

Government Actions towards Corruption Reflection

Many of the economical problems that countries experience gets addressed easily
by their government, whether it would take time for it to be solved or not, the challenges
can be conquered. This is seen mostly in first world countries such as China and US.
This is why our country, the Philippines, have laws in some specific field (e.g.,
Accountancy) that are based on these top countries’ existing laws and regulations. In
relation to today’s problem, in terms of the virus, Mainland China – the place where the
virus started, has a case of only 90,000 in its entirety while ours in the Philippines have
amounted to 864,000. Of course, it is not only the job of the government to keep leading
but also of its citizens to follow the lead. It is however baffling that the way our
government deals with emergent problems are often hasty or unprofessional. Say for
instance, the problem that continues to plague our country – corruption is still something
that needs to be addressed, yet as time goes by, it keeps getting worse. Has the
government done anything about it? What about the common people? The following
statements will explain what I have realized about the whole situation occurring in the
Philippines.

Corruption will continue to grow if either one of the 2 cases are not followed: (1)
the people in authority is greedy, (2) the common people are greedy. Although this is
too overly generalized, the only thing this statement is implying is that even if the
government takes action to stop it, if the people continue to disobey it due to self-
satisfaction, then it will never be truly removed. I do agree that the government has
interventions such as Duterte saying nonsensical things such as bringing the corrupt
businessman to kneel down in front of the affected party and also enacting laws around
frauds and corruption. However, the way our government executes the plan and the
bias they have towards their supporters that are corrupt will basically keep the
corruption going. The government does not have concrete plans in attacking businesses
that are sneakily doing illegal things such as smuggling and “kupit-pera.” They turn a
blind eye on corrupt businessmen that supports them financially. In addition, even the
common people are greedy for money, especially on times like these (pandemic and job
loss), which have made many honest people lose money on spending from online
shopping, on hiring employees that fake the amount of profit the business earns to keep
things to themselves, etc. Although there were protests against corruption, due to
having little to no power at all, these people have just made it harder for others to know
which business is corrupt or not. Pocketing money will always be something hard to
know because we are not prophets. There may be evidence towards those illegal
actions, but sometimes, they are not incriminating enough to condemn people doing
those actions.

Overall, all I wanted to say is that although there is government intervention on

corruption, it will have little to no effect at all and bad things like corruption will continue
to grow unless we tackle the root of the problem and leaving no leeway for anything,
even those that bring benefit to you only. If both the people and the government move,
then corruption can be removed. Of course, the government should also start by
actually making feasible and truthful solutions to these problems.