In their paper titled “JPEPA: Why the Need to Ratify”, economists Josef Yap, Erlinda Medalla and Rafaelita Aldaba outlined the arguments in support of the ratification of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA). In brief, the arguments include the following claims: a positive impact on gross domestic product (GDP), generation of jobs, and poverty reduction. Such impact is expected to result from greater access to the Japanese market in terms of trade and movement of natural persons and from declining prices, rising incomes, and increased Japanese foreign direct investment (FDI). Fail to ratify, and we lose all these opportunities.

The past couple of weeks, we’ve been bombarded with news of one government scandal after another — from the ZTE-NBN deal and golf meeting offers to the impeachment vote bribes, to the Malacañang brown paper pabaons. These unfolding series brings together a cast from various government units, as it bares exchanges among powerful players including appointed and elected officials. It’s not just the scale of corruption and the amount of bribes and kickbacks that make the cases shocking and explosive. It’s also the way that the cases are insidiously interconnected, rather than separate, isolated incidents. We bear witness to a trail of kickbacks and bribes, one deal spawning, requiring, demanding yet another, underscoring the critical engine that actually drives this government: grease money.