UNITED NATIONS – The Philippines’ former Senator Francisco S. Tatad has called for an end to the “political looting of poor countries,” and the adoption of a single international standard to judge the legitimacy and fitness of political leaders running corrupt governments, during a high-level international symposium on human rights, democracy and social justice at the United Nations.

“Political corruption is now a transnational crime. Global cooperation is needed to unlock the secret foreign bank accounts of corrupt political leaders, and make sure the monies are returned to the people who are their real owners,” Tatad told the Third International Solidarity Forum at the Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, UN Headquarters.
At the same time, “the theft of public office has become a far larger crime than the usual theft in public office. The international community should have only one standard in judging the legitimacy and fitness of corrupt political leaders everywhere. There cannot be one rule for some and another for others,” said Tatad, a ranking Opposition leader and chair of the Citizens vs. Corruption Task Force in the Philippines.
“Today, Belarus is pictured as one country where someone not validly elected has taken over the government. This has provoked the strongest reaction from the United States. Yet in another region, there is at least this other country where the same situation has existed these last five years, without provoking the same concern from any member of G-7 or G-8.
“This is crucial because corruption of the electoral process, as distinguished from other forms of political corruption, does not merely pose a danger to democracy; it destroys the very essence thereof. And it destroys everything else,” Tatad said.
Although Tatad did not mention his country or its president by name, he was clearly referring to the Philippines where the Opposition has accused President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of having rigged the 2004 elections in her favor, and where 65 percent of the people, according to the latest survey, want her out.  The US, the country’s most important ally, has so far kept a hands-off position on this issue.
Tatad said it was absolutely necessary that the UN Convention against Corruption, which was signed in Merida, Mexico in December 2003, as a culmination of the efforts of the various regional groupings in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas to forge a common document, should become the basic charter of global cooperation in fighting corruption.
“Some countries have shown that corruption can be deterred. But there must be a willful and determined effort to put in those deterrents. These include: cohesive political institutions with open decision-making; a highly professionalized bureaucracy committed to ignore and resist extra-legal pressures or influence from any source; civic  organizations with strong institutional links to relevant multilateral organizations; a social environment in which the press, the academe, the professions and civil society itself are committed to speaking out; a morally upright leadership that will always do what is right, whatever the consequence; a strong sense of the rule of law; and what John Rawls calls ‘a public conception of justice’,” Tatad said.
“But this is not enough. Everyone must realize the fight is moral, not simply political. It is a struggle for the virtuous life, not simply for the most enjoyable one. We cannot reject the corruption of our politics completely unless we first reject the corruption of the truth about the human person. For political corruption corrupts our politics, but corruption of the truth about the human person corrupts the whole person, and his relationship with everybody else,” Tatad pointed out.ttt