Days ago the world awoke to news about a mob of Filipinos spray painting the walls and throwing gobs of mud at the Pasig City offices of an allegedly corrupt government contractor who had amassed a collection of 28 luxury automobiles — six Mercedes, three Land Rovers, a Toyota Tundra, a Toyota Sequoia, a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, a Jaguar…. The list goes on.
This kind of corruption is old hat in the Philippines, and it must make favorite son José Rizal turn in his grave. Even to outside observers, the Philippines is noteworthy for its corruption, thanks in large part to the family of former President Ferdinand Marcos, whose looting and greed in the 1970s was so immense that one had to reach into celestial mechanics for the vocabulary to talk about it.
The target of the recent protests in Pasig City, which is part of Metro Manila, was the headquarters of St. Gerrard Construction, owned by the Discaya family. The protest was staged by flood survivors and environmental groups venting their rage over alleged corruption in unfinished and sloppily built flood control projects.
This event and others like it give the country a bad rap in the community of nations, where the Philippines ranks low on perceptions of honesty in government.
This is evidenced by several established global rankings of perceived corruption across nations. The most noteworthy is the Corruption Perceptions Index, published annually by Transparency International. The CPI scores countries on a scale from 0, for highly corrupt, to 100, for very clean.
In the 2024 CPI, released earlier this year, the Philippines scored 33 out of 100, a decline of 1 point from 34 in 2023. This puts the nation at No. 114 out of 180 countries, tied with nations like Bolivia and Kenya — not the best company — and indicating no significant improvement over time.
For context, top-ranked countries are Denmark, with a score of 90, and Finland, with 87. The bottom dweller is Somalia, with a score of 12, where citizens face severe endemic corruption.
Similar rankings include the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators and the Global Corruption Barometer, both of which incorporate public opinion into their measures and consistently put the Philippines in a lower-middle tier globally.
Filipinos themselves rate corruption in government as significant and persistent, often viewing it as a top national concern alongside inflation, poverty and unemployment.
Domestic surveys reveal widespread disillusionment, with many perceiving politics as inherently corrupt, disorderly, and money-driven. For instance, a March 2025 survey by Pulse Asia, a public opinion research organization in Quezon City, found that 28 percent of Filipinos identified graft and corruption in government as urgent national issues.
And a subsequent July 2025 survey by Pulse Asia reported a 66 percent disapproval of the current administration’s performance, explicitly tied to dissatisfaction with corruption and food insecurity.
A July 2025 public opinion survey by Publicus Asia, a political consulting firm in Pasig City, reinforced this, listing corruption as the top concern for Filipinos, ahead of economic issues and inflation.
Additionally, a March 2025 Philstar report cited a survey in which more than half of respondents described Philippine politics as “corrupt or all about money.”
Pulse Asia and Social Weather Stations, the nation’s premier public opinion polling body, which is located in Quezon City, connect these perceptions to high-profile scandals like flood control irregularities and misuse of funds.
As background, and citing historical events, some blame corruption today on the legacy of the Catholic Church. The Philippines was a Spanish colony from 1565 to 1898, and the Catholic Church arrived in the islands with all the usual Iberian baggage.
While there may be some basis for pinning corruption on the Catholic Church, it is inadequate to explain circumstances today, more than a century later.
The hyperbolic greed and venality of the Catholic Church were graphically depicted in José Rizal’s seminal novel Nolí me Tángere in 1887, which became fodder for the Philippine Revolution of 1896 to 1898 and which led to Rizal’s execution by firing squad on Dec. 30, 1896.
Subsequently United States Admiral George Dewey on May 1, 1898, kicked the Spanish out of the Philippines with the utter annihilation of the Spanish Pacific Squadron in the Battle of Manila Bay. This event was followed by nearly half a century of the archipelago as an American colony, and then by its current status as an independent nation with a modern constitutional government.
So, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since 1898.
Besides, today, under Rizal’s Law, which was approved in 1956, all Philippine children are required to read Noli me Tángere, pubished in 1887, in the ninth grade, and its sequel, El Filibusterismo, pubished in 1891, in the tenth grade — but in Tagalog, not in the original Spanish.
So all Filipino school children should be well-schooled in the signs and the effects of corruption. However, it should be added that Rizal’s Law is not strictly enforced. Data from a 2021 ethnographic study in Rizal Province, of all places — because the province is named after the author himself — indicate that most Grade 9 students do not actually read Nolí me Tángere, but rely on summaries and “media adaptations” — a polite way of saying comics and movies.
Some of the Philippines’ neighbors in Asia with colonial histories have become exemplary models of sound government. Singapore and Hong Kong come to mind. Hong Kong scores 74 out of 100 on the CPI, ranking it at 17 out of 180 nations; and Singapore scores 84 and is ranked No. 3 worldwide.
Singapore and Hong Kong score high partly because both have strong anti-corruption bodies. In Singapore the anti-corruption agency is called the Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, and in Hong Kong it is the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
Singapore’s CPIB is a gold standard globally for anti-corruption bodies, often presented as a model for anti-corruption efforts, as is Hong Kong’s ICAC.
The Philippines has its own anticorruption body, the Office of the Ombudsman, but the agency faces challenges of underfunding, political interference and case backlogs, according to local pundits.
Bryce McIntyre, PhD, resides San Andres. He holds a doctoral degree from Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA.