how sure are you that you won't be a corrupt official if given the opportunity?

[ab_initio]

Prayer is NO guarantee

She prayed for continued impunity and immunity. Mine is preventive.

[renzo_d10]

I wouldn't say 101%, for sure, madali lang sabihin ngayon na hindi ako magcocorrupt blah blah. Pero pag nandun na sa pwesto wherein tons of millions is within reach, I'd highly doubt na 101% sure pa rin na hindi kukunin or iggrab yung so called " grasya " na iyon.

50-50 for me also.

[ab_initio]

Govenment officials may be appointed or elected.

[xoom]

She prayed for continued impunity and immunity. Mine is preventive.

ang tanong.... kanino naman kaya nagdadasal yang impaktang si gloria?

[ab_initio]

ang tanong.... kanino naman kaya nagdadasal yang impaktang si gloria?

You have a point.

[CVT]

diba tuwing linggo nagsisimba din ang mga politician?

And, all of them are highly regarded in their Parishes..

12.2K:lawn:

[vito corleone]

And, all of them are highly regarded in their Parishes..

12.2K:lawn:

pag nagdonate kaya ang mga yan sa parish at alam ng parish priest na galing sa nakaw ang dinodonate na pera, tinatanggap kaya ng pari?

[uls]

eto mga men of God

they pray a lot

i bet they pray more often than anyone posting here

[ab_initio]

Out of context.

:lol:

[anonemus]

Sa mga taong may oras magbasa:

“How Good People Turn Evil” – Corruption in the Philippines

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Maria Ressa
Last week’s expose by Lt. Col. George Rabusa ripped open a Pandora’s box of corruption that implicated three former military chiefs-of-staff. He is expected to reveal more including implicating former Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
The reason Rabuza can expose it is because he was part of it. Many more people allowed this corruption to happen in plain sight and continue to help spread it by staying quiet. By choosing to expose this endemic corruption, Rabuza performed a redemptive act, but how can he have been part of this system for so long? How can good people turn evil?


How can good people turn evil? I attempt some answers. On Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2011, multinational company MSD asked me to keynote their national conference – a group of about 500 people, 400 of them in sales. They asked me to address ongoing corruption between medical representatives and doctors – as insidious a problem as corruption in media. The fact that MSD made it a principle to fight it and are telling their med reps to veer away from it was something I wanted to be part of. This was the speech I gave.
The Courage to Do What’s Right
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you tonight. When Marco called me, I was with my family – my parents from Florida, my sister from LA, another sister who moved to Manila from NY. We were just getting off a plane – the first real break we’d had together in six years. Because of the timing of the request, I would’ve said no to anything else but it’s very hard to say no to this topic – how to be successful AND be true to your values and ethics. Thank you to each of you – and to the management of MSD – for caring about it … and for asking me to put my thoughts together for you tonight.
I KNOW you can do both, but it’s not easy to be both successful and ethical in our country today. Corruption is endemic. It infiltrates so many aspects of our lives. Influence-peddling is the name of the game. Conflicts of interest are all over the place. I found many Filipino organizations have a difficult time even defining what conflict of interest means. It’s too easy to rationalize particularly when it means more money or influence.
Sometimes doing the wrong thing seems to be the only way to get ahead. I’ve heard so many Filipinos say that – particularly the street-savvy operators who are trying to get you to do the wrong thing!
You have to find the courage to say no. You have to do what’s right – not just for your company, but for yourself. You have to find and set this line – a line you promise yourself you will never cross – because crossing that line means you’re turning from good to evil. It’s that simple. And you must make it that simple.
Why? This insight came from a dinner I had Tuesday night with an accomplished, incredible group of five women, fellow awardees for the TOWNS – Ten Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service. All 5 are doctors – two medical doctors, three PhDs. Everyone at the table was a teacher, and everyone had chosen to leave a western nation – from the US, London, Australia – in order to come back – to come home to the Philippines.
This group tries to get together at least once a year to support each other in our work, and to give each other feedback from our different fields. Our topic Tuesday was corruption and how we choose to fight it in our society. One woman said she was tired and needed to pull back. Another talked about how people who try to do the right thing seem to have to work so hard and get paid so little. Still a third said she was surprised at how good people can turn so evil – how people she knew from college are now so corrupt, and yet they don’t seem to understand nor feel that they are doing anything wrong!
That was the insight: corrupt people don’t think they’re corrupt. Just like evil people don’t think they’re evil. Because getting there starts with one small step across a line.
Once you take that first step and cross over, the succeeding steps become easier, and before you know it, you’re not just corrupt but are now corrupting others. This, for me, is like a reverse tipping point. You know the book by Malcolm Gladwell? The subtitle to the Tipping Point is How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. The idea is that it’s the little steps that begin the change that simmers beneath the surface until the system hits critical mass, the boiling point.
When did we become endemically corrupt as a nation? The point when enough people took enough small steps to make it that way.
We have to change it. How do we do that? By understanding how we got there. It starts with each person making a choice. Draw the line in the sand. Do not cross it.
The most dangerous decision is that first one – when you move from being perfectly clean and idealistic … to being tempted … to wanting it… and then accepting it. Don’t do it. Once you do, it’s a slippery slope. Define that line and DO NOT CROSS it. If you’ve already done it, pay special attention to the four step program at the end, ok?
As a journalist, media corruption is a fact of life. Politicians, company officers and government officials have said they’re flabbergasted by the number of journalists on their payrolls. I ask, “why don’t you stop paying and expose them?” They say they can’t because they’re afraid if they don’t pay, they would be attacked. It’s so prevalent the radio guys coined a term for it – “AC-DC” – Attack-Collect-Defend-Collect.
Of course, paying also works in favor of the newsmakers: if they pay, they control what’s written or said about them. They know when it will come out, and what type of exposure and PR they can get. That certainty, for them, is worth paying journalists. So the cycle feeds itself.
Young journalists say no because they’re idealistic, but after a while, they start to see the way things really work. They begin to get disillusioned. The lines begin to blur together, particularly since so many of their elders are doing it.
Then the real test comes – the offer that’s hard to refuse. Everyone gets that. If you pass that test, chances are you’ll stay clean your whole professional career. It’s a tipping point in a positive way. You’ve already said no to the hardest offer to decline – the one you wanted the most – so everything is easy. But the tipping point works the other way if you accept.
It starts with envelopes of money in press conferences. When I was with Probe, I thought, let’s make it easier for the newsmakers and publicly state our position against what we called envelopmental journalism. So we did.
Strangely, other journalists – our colleagues – were critical of us for raining on their parade. During that time, it seemed to me that the clean journalists were the ones who were ostracized and cowed into silence. They didn’t trumpet their beliefs because they were afraid others would say they’re “nagmamalinis” – even if that really was what we should be doing. Our cultural values somehow doesn’t extend to making others ashamed to be corrupt. A friend explained it to me this way: “I have no right to take that money away from his kids.”
There are some simple truths. The more you say no, the easier it becomes. The more you do the right thing, the harder it is to do the wrong thing. It’s a tipping point approach to building your identity.
My line in the sand was defined long ago. The tipping point happened in the mid-90’s – when the fiancée of one of my closest friends offered me $150,000 to do a story for CNN. It wouldn’t be traceable, he told me, and it would be deposited directly into my bank account. He gave the offer over lunch, and although I wanted to say no immediately, he held my hand and said, please take at least a night to sleep on it and think about it. I did.
I was shocked. I didn’t even tell my friend. That night, I thought about it. But then reality stepped in. My sense of self is tied to being a professional journalist, and I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I accepted the bribe.
I had drawn the line clearly, and I knew that accepting that money would make me a fundamentally different person. On this side of the line, I’m good. On the other side, I’m evil. It’s that simple....

(for more, click on the link below)
http://www.mariaressa.com/how-good-p...e-philippines/