The hard truth on soft corruption

Only smart-ass law­yers, hucksters and politicians have the gall to split hairs, in­voke quantum physics they do not understand and eventually create razor-thin fine distinc­tions between hard and soft corruption. As if there really was a great and discernible dif­ference for the people who are its victims. Hard or soft, cor­ruption is corruption. The stat­utes make no distinctions and neither should the public draw lines across muddy waters.

In our imported model of democracy, inherited from the United States and the same against which we’ve created our very own Filipino facsim­ile, subsequently adjusting pa­rameters according to our own cultural biases, the difference between hard and soft corrup­tion is quickly becoming an election issue in the current American presidential derby.

The differences are now front and center, and critical. A slightly leading candidate enjoying simply a statistical er­ror at the Congressional Col­lege is at the center of criminal investigations. That, for the Americans must be a historic first. It is amusing in a warped sort of way from the Filipino point of view because such irony is nothing new in Philip­pines politics where we’ve long equated criminality with poli­ticians, including those we’ve both installed as president and those still seeking such powers. It is not difficult to come up with recent examples. We seem to be collecting criminal politi­cians, like garbage collects flies.

Should we reboot our standards of morality and our sense of right and wrong, wiping out current corrupted measures and benchmarks of corrupt behavior that we’ve for far too long been accustomed that it’s turned into the norm, cleaning the slate, as it were, we might be able to appreciate what a good number of Amer­icans are now experiencing, confronted as they are with a very potent presidential front­runner in the midst of criminal investigations.

Note that from the crim­inal issues charged against a front-running presidential candidate in the United States, these involve charges ranging from the deliberate destruction of critical evidence and smash­ing hardware to corrupting government agencies, to vir­tually soliciting and accept­ing what might be considered bribes from foreign govern­ments and private corpora­tions, money paid in advance in a possible quid pro quo in return for presidential favors, a tactic known as “Pay for Play.” It is that latter charge of mul­timillion-dollar fund solicita­tions in exchange for favors that is considered “soft corrup­tion.”

Hard corruption is what we usually have in the Philip­pines. Bribery is hard corrup­tion. Mulcting from motor­ists is hard corruption. The pork-barrel controversy under the Aquino administration, placing an embargo on bud­geted funds, subsequently de­claring these prematurely as savings and bequeathing con­trol over these to the whims of the KKK (Kaklase, Kaibigan and Kabarilan) to reward a vote in an impeachment—that’s hard corruption. Rechanelling and malversing gas and oilfield development funds from their intended purpose in develop­ing energy sources to political doles – that’s hard corruption.

Now, what exactly is “soft corruption?”

In mob-speak, just to ap­ply the popular lexicon we might all appreciate, it is called racketeering. Soft corruption is technically technical corrup­tion. Rather than a dictionary definition, employing generic bribery as a reference point, let us present a clear example that we might see through the hard truth on soft corruption.

As the Americans troop to the polling booths this week, the issue of soft corruption looms large for one candidate facing as much as two separate and distinct criminal investiga­tions, both depicting clear ex­amples of soft corruption.

As foundations are gen­erally tax-free enterprises, they can be conduits for hidden personal income. In the case of the foundation under the investigation, it was supposed to be an enterprise for charita­ble works, scholarship and aid programs. It was not.

Internal Revenue Service reports show that while the foundation had raised in excess of $500 million in a short span of four years, less than a fifth of the money raised had ac­tually gone to charity. Most of the funds, or over $425 million had gone to personal expenses for its principals and officers, either as travel expenses for in­ternational speeches delivered before private corporations and foreign entities, or as direct compensation, wages, salaries and other perks and benefits. In fact, as much as 60 percent of the total funds raised remain unidentified as miscellaneous expenses.

In a separate and distinct landmark case in the United States where soft corruption was charged in an instance involving free speech and the right to information coming at a time right before an electoral exercise, one judicial opinion stated that soft corruption hurts no one. That opinion is wrong. When brazenly and insidiously employed from the presidency, the highest office in the land, and in the case of the United States, per­haps the most powerful of­fice on the planet, from there trading off political influence and favors for hard cash to enrich personal fortunes, soft corruption destroys the in­tegrity of the office and any and all of the democratic in­stitutions below.