Philippines: Politics

By: Joseph Seabra
The government of the Philippines is structured much in the same way as the United States which can be attributed to its control by the United States previously as a territory. The Philippines is a democracy with a legislative, executive, and judicial branch with a bicameral legislature as the head representation of the legislative branch, the president as the head of the executive branch, and the Philippines supreme court as the head of the judicial branch (Szczepanski, 2018). The current president of the Philippines is Rodrigo Duterte who was elected in 2016, and under the Philippines one six-year term policy will be in office until 2022 (Szczepanski, 2018).

Although the Philippines is thought to have a government that is structured much like the United States, it is evident that the government runs rampant with political corruption when it comes to its control of businesses and infrastructural growth. According to the GAN: Business Anti-Corruption Portal the Philippines is renowned for its bribery of officials for the implementation of “vague and complex laws” which in turn “make foreign companies vulnerable to extortion and manipulation by public officials” (2017). Within the Philippines it seems as if the bribery of political officials is done by large companies, most of which these political officials have some sort of affiliation with. This bribery seems to go unchecked though as it seems that the organizations and law enforcement groups that regulate these problems also seem to have a large problem with a bribery of its officials as well (2017). This could come as a problem for the future technological growth of the Philippines, because by the country providing problems to foreign companies, they will limit any introduction of new technologies.

It can be said that the technological growth within a country is often spurred on by that country’s financial investment into the development and research of new technologies. Though just over the span of 50 years the Philippines has lost an estimated $410.5 billion dollars to the “illicit financial flow” of money according to the Global Financial Integrity Organization (Rey, 2017). Most of this financial loss was assumed to be caused by the countries extremely low lack of integrity within its customs enforcement, and its “mis invoicing of trade” (Rey, 2017). It is not known where this money ended up, but where it did not end up was in the development of further technologies for the country. The Philippines which is a country that relies heavily on the growth of its infrastructure due to tourism, must also develop its technology to follow along with its infrastructural growth. Though if the Philippines continues to cause issues with the growth of foreign companies, it will not be able to technologically advance and may fall behind the rest of the world in its technological development. 

References

Rey, A. (2017). IN NUMBERS: Impact of corruption on the Philippines. In Rappler.com. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/corruption/141391-impact-corruption-philippines

Szczepanski, K. (2018). The Philippines: Facts and History. In ThoughtCo.. Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https://www.thoughtco.com/the-philippines-facts-and-history-195655

(2017). The Philippines Corruption Report. In GAN: Business Anti-Corruption Portal. Retrieved September 9, 2019, from https://www.ganintegrity.com/portal/country-profiles/the-philippines/