IMO

the EVAT was necessary because of poor Income Tax collection. a lot of people don't pay / file the proper income tax. including some businessmen / professionals and those involved in the underground economy. so in order to "force" them to pay taxes is to tax the sale of goods / services (since almost everyone buys in one way or the other).

our gov't's expenditure for last year is only around $15B. in comparison to our other SEA neighbors - we are very frugal: Vietnam = $10B, Thailand = $30B, Malaysia = $25B; Indonesia = $52B.

and about corruption in the gov't... almost all developing countries have the same level of corruption... even european countries like spain & italy do have their share of that. problem is that with our meager budget & income - corruption is just magnified.

you WILL and CANNOT totally eradicate corruption with whatever grand ideas of a new government & leader and what have you. it is there and it'll take decades to eradicate that (only a good economy counters corruption).