Puny but still welcome.

Of course, we expected a more dramatic, if not spectacular, moral transformation in government from the guy who promised us Tuwid na Daaan.

President Aquino only has himself to blame for raising the people’s expectations of such transformation just a tad too high when he wa still campaigning for the highest office in the land.

When the promised reforms come in trickles or are slowly felt, public frustration correspondingly heightens.     

But considering that corruption has become a massive, systemic, and generational problem in the country, what has been plundered or pillaged over many administrations cannot conceivably be undone in just a year or two of any new national leadership. 

This much we can concede, but we also strongly suggest that the administration keep its focus on its anti-corruption campaign, bring it up to speed, and tighten its watch on the vulnerable agencies.

If it does not want to listen to what we’re saying, then we’ll just let the global group Transparency International do the talking: Corruption perception in the Philippines has slightly improved.

Put another way, the much-vaunted anti-graft drive hardly made a dent.

TI-Philippines board member Araceli Estrada Villanueva yesterday said that from last year’s 2.4 percent, the country’s  score in their Corruption Perception Index  has gone up to 2.6 percent.

Apart from the Philippines, the four other countries that garnered a score of 2.6 are Armenia, Dominican Republic, Syria, and Honduras.

On the other hand, the top five countries perceived to be the least corrupt are New Zealand, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Singapore, while those at the tail-end of the CPI are Afghanistan, Myanmar, North Korea and Somalia.

In their scoring system, the score zero is the most corrupt while a perfect 10 means that the country is the least corrupt or very clean.

“Some say that it (.2 percent improvement) is so insignificant, but for us at TI, there is a movement and the movement is not going down, it is going up. So even if the change is small, it is still going up... It may not be a leap, but we made an improvement from 2.4 to 2.6 percent,” Villanueva was quoted by a major broadsheet as saying.

Last year, the Philippines ranked no. 134 out of the 170 countries surveyed. This year, TI said the country landed in 129th spot out of 183 counties.

However, Villanueva said that rank 129 was not a reason to rejoice since the country’s rating last year cannot be compared to this year’s.

Meanwhile, TI-Philippines chair retired Judge Dolores Espaol said,”The only way to improve the CPI score is for the general public to see results and experience clean governance in their everyday lives.   Results manifested in concrete efforts such as convictions of high-level corruption cases, compliance to the Anti-Red Tape Act, passage of the Freedom of Information Act and pursuance of the enactment of the Whistleblower’s Protection Law, among many others.”

Villanueva added that since the CPI is based on perception, Filipinos should take this as a challenge to stop corruption.

“This is a challenge, if you are perceived to be bad you have to rise up to the challenge. As far as we are concerned, we lack the activism to fight corruption. We are not that passionate to fight corruption. We have to move out of that perception. We might be bad, but not that bad,” Villanueva said.

The TI official is also optimistic that the slight improvement of the Philippines in terms of corruption would help boost investor confidence in the country.