Hera’s father works for the local government and was telling us yesterday about “SOP” – Standard Operating Procedure. It’s the term for executive-level corruption in the Philippines. SOP is the jacking up of the price of government projects by contractors who then pass the extra cash on to government officials. I was told last night by the Mayor’s speech writer that any project more than 20 million pesos (about $500,000) gets 30% or more SOP. The money gets spread down from presidents, governors, mayors and down to barangay (neighborhood/sub-district) chiefs. It’s Standard Operating Procedure because no one needs to ask for it, it just comes. There effectively is no non-corrupt executive leader in the Philippines. They don’t need to do anything other than do their jobs building roads, bridges, schools and hospitals and the dirty money flows right into their hands.

China has corruption too, of course, but it’s different.
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