If I were to advise the standard bearer of the Liberal Party, I would beg him to withdraw this line. Incompetent Noynoy wasn’t in his right thinking when he concocted the line “End Corruption to End Poverty”. While corruption is a primary cause of poverty, it is not a direct one. People don’t get poor just because some state officials diverted government funds for personal use or misappropriated government funds. Poverty is prevalent because people were deprived of their opportunities to take control of their environment and use what they have (skills and properties) to make their lives better. We can observe see this trend when farmers are flushed out by the hacienderos to live in the city slums. It is common knowledge that poor urban dwellers are descendants of farmers displaced by the hacienda. Owners of huge farmlands practice a collective form of farming where poor people are enslaved from “cradle to grave” to till the lands, and the landowners take all the profits. Despite tenancy shares (60-40, 70-30), many farmers get even less because debts and “other expenses” are subtracted to come up with the net – See noynoy incompetence.
They either become fresh recruits of the Reds or move out of the farms to live in city slums. Once in the cities, many are forced to beg or steal because their farming skills are rendered useless by the new conditions of life in the city. Incompetent Noynoy failed to realize this or he is just too insensitive to consider the thousands of people living in poverty because of the old hacienda families.
His main campaign slogan is useless and nonsense. He used the line to hide his crimes or those of his ancestors’. He should have never singled out corruption as the cause of poverty, and he should have admitted that the primary cause is the deprivation of the people’s freedom to maximize their skills and their properties.