Kleptocrats

Instead, kleptocracy is properly about a system of government in which the political leaders systematically use public institutions and processes to enrich themselves instead of serving the public. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

In fact, arguing that our present state of affairs isn’t a kleptocracy is pointless, especially after closely reading the daily news cycle; or in these times of social media’s partisan echo chambers, teasing out the meanings of the corruption memes leveled against politicians you either love or hate.

When most of us hotly disparage corruption, especially corrupted big-ticket items like multi-million flood control projects, we’re actually denouncing our modern Filipino kleptocracy or individual Filipino kleptocrats.

By accurately pinning down some of our reprehensible political leaders as kleptocrats we’ll be better off. Calling them merely corrupt is too kind and cuddly. Calling them merely corrupt only embarrasses them, as it only means they’ve been feasting only on bribes which doesn’t hit the mark.

Accuracy also gives us the added advantage of dispensing with the duplicitous phenomenon of a demonstrably kleptocratic political leader transforming into a principled, crusade-driven crusader for good governance.

It’s really about time we call out our political leaders for what they really are — kleptocrats.

And, once we correctly see these leaders as kleptocrats, they’ll be jumping all over the place like boiled frogs.

They react like that since what we’re actually accusing them of is that beyond their corruption they’re actively propping up a well-shielded kleptocracy they’ve put in place, which as we’ve since learned makes for weak public services, poor infrastructure, rising inequality and deepening poverty.

Now that we’re wide awake, our attention is no longer diverted or hoodwinked by minor corruption questions but more of us wanting serious action against kleptocratic rule and the chief instruments used in that rule.

In that rude awakening, however, we should guard against quickly asserting the familiar conclusion that unabated corruption made the Philippines a hopelessly failed state.

“Corruption in a kleptocracy is not a failure of state — it is the way the state is designed to function,” asserts the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Our present system therefore isn’t about a failed state but actually about a functioning state where its functions are ingeniously designed or maneuvered into serving the kleptocracy rather than the democracy we’ve all been sold.

So drastic in fact is the kleptocrat’s widely successful cooptation and capture of the state to maintain themselves and their power, we’ve arrived at a situation where “leaders treat public money as private wealth, while institutions such as the judiciary, police, tax authorities, and bureaucracy protect elite interests rather the common good.”

Not only are kleptocrats gorging themselves while extracting wealth from the public treasury, they’re also enjoying their illicit wealth beyond our shores, which has since made us realize we couldn’t do anything about it, much less force them to return it.

Our kleptocrats make use of global financial networks to hide or move stolen or illicit wealth through offshore tax havens, shell companies, foreign banks, and luxury real estate abroad.

Ferreting out extracted wealth abroad, in fact, partly explains why it’s damn difficult to run down kleptocrats freely gallivanting around different world capitals as in the case of the fugitive Zaldy Co.