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Daphne Galvez - The Philippine Star
December 10, 2025 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — While accountability is needed to curb corruption, reforms in the system are as much needed to keep abuses from happening over and over again, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla said yesterday.
“Our national conversation cannot stop at accountability. Accountability is mandatory – but it is not enough. If all we do is punish without reforming, then we are merely managing the symptoms of a deeper disease,” Remulla said in his keynote speech at the Sikhay Laban sa Korapsyon forum held to mark International Anti-Corruption Day.
“Accountability corrects the past; reform secures the future. And we cannot accept anything less,” Remulla said.
“We must confront the harder task – fixing the systems that allowed corruption to take root, strengthening the rules that were too weak and redesigning processes that failed the people,” he added. Without reforms, the same abuses will only continue “under new names and new faces,” he pointed out.
The ombudsman said reform measures are expected to be in place by February next year, mainly on digitalization.
He said corruption thrives “where data is weak and paper trails disappear.” Remulla revealed his office is building a fully digital ombudsman with integrated systems, digital forensics, AI-supported verification and secure investigative workflows.
“The ombudsman’s office will refuse to be a record of politics. I tell our people, every day, something must be accomplished. Because corruption wins when the government slows down... Defeat corruption by refusing to waste time,” Remulla added.
In order to avoid being used as “weapon of politics,” the Office of the Ombudsman must form formidable partnerships with institutions with constitutional fiscal autonomy.
Since assuming his post in October, Remulla has been instituting changes such as lifting restrictions on public access to statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs) of government officials, reversing the policy of his predecessor Samuel Martires.
His office has also lodged several high-profile cases against officials linked to anomalous flood control projects.
Quality education
Also in observance of the International Anti-Corruption Day, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) called on educators to deepen their political vigilance, to defend the right of the youth to quality education and to stand with the broad masses in their fight for accountability, justice and genuine change.
“On this day, we affirm our commitment to serve the people… The road ahead demands clarity and resolve, but the strength of the people is decisive,” ACT said.
It said the crisis besetting the country has its roots not in the personal failings of officials but in the very structure of “semifeudal, semicolonial society.”
“Corruption is far from being mere isolated excesses of a few bad apples. It is the inevitable product of bureaucrat capitalism, in which those who hold state power convert public office into private capital. In this system, every sector that depends on public funds, workers, peasants, teachers, students, employees, small professionals and the wider masses are injured, deprived or restrained,” the ACT said.
It said the youth, “who should be nurtured by the nation, instead attend schools whose conditions testify to decades of plunder overcrowded classrooms, unsafe buildings, shortages in textbooks and facilities and teachers forced to shoulder the gaps.”
“These conditions are the direct consequences of a ruling clique that drains resources meant for the people and diverts them toward patronage, political dominance and private enrichment,” ACT said..
FOI bill
CIBAC party-list Rep. Eddie Villanueva, for his part, called on Congress anew to immediately pass into law the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill.
“On this special day, we renew our call for the swift passage of the long-overdue FOI bill. The passage of the FOI law is the most appropriate response to all the corruption scandals and exposes that shocked us in the past months and years,” Villanueva said.
Meanwhile, Caritas Philippines head Bishop Gerardo Alminaza has called for the passage of the anti-dynasty bill, saying it is essential to ending corruption and achieving reform.
“An Anti-Dynasty Law should be passed without delay. Some clans have dominated politics for decades. Yet, even newer politicians in national leadership seem to quickly expand their reach through the election or appointment of their relatives,” Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos in Negros Province said.
Speaker Faustino Dy III expressed earlier his support for an anti-dynasty bill, a measure mandated by the 1987 Constitution, but which never had an enabling law.
“We are facing a moral reckoning, and our people are seeking the truth. Corruption must finally end; nothing less will do. This is also the moment for our nation to pass a genuine anti-dynasty law,” he said. — Bella Cariaso, Jose Rodel Clapano, Gilbert Bayoran
