Mindanao, Philippines
The Columban Parish of San Jose (St Joseph’s Parish
Corruption: The Midsalip Case.
Church leaders and a former police chief fight corruption.
They fought to save their tropical forest in the late 1980’s. They fought to save the same forest from the Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto in the mid-1990’s and since then they are fighting to get back from the local government their money for local health and development.
Leading the church of San Jose (St. Joseph’s) Midsalip, in western Mindanao is a former church parish worker, Presioso Tapitan known as “Soso” and a former chief of Police, Paulino Alecha known as the “Hipi”, slang for police chief.
At the beginning of the new millennium they filed a legal case in the local regional court against the small town officials for misappropriating central government
funds which was tagged to develop the infrastructure and help the poor, especially in health issues.
The local government, the Midsalip municipal government, pronounced a resolution claiming the salaries of a first class city. (There are two first class cities in the whole of the Philippines, Cebu and the national capital, Manila). Midsalip is in reality a fifth class small farming town in the mountains of western Mindanao. You can walk around it with leisure in 30 minutes.
The local government of Midsalip, claiming to be a first class city, adopted the salary of the same eating up all the internal revenue allotment (IRA) it receives from central government through the Bureau of Budget Management. The amount now comes to some 27,000,000 pesos annually or equivalent to £270,000 pounds a year. It may seem small by our standards but in the Philippines it is a lot of money.
Children are the first to suffer as there is little to no health services. Roads and infrastructure suffer too as the money is gobbled up in bloated salaries for the mayor and municipal officials. It is painful for farmers
