Albay Representative Joey Salceda is seeking to introduce a “flurry of proposals” to combat regulatory capture in government agencies and support President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-corruption drive.

In an aide-memoire sent to Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano on Monday, Salceda said he would study proposals that would promote “regulatory recovery”, which is a process of reclaiming regulatory agencies that have been corrupted by special interests or that have become too closely aligned with the sectors it sought to regulate.

Regulatory capture is defined by economists as a case wherein regulatory agencies are dominated by private interests that they are supposed to regulate.

“The Regulatory Recovery Project of this office will be characterized by “Bill, Bill, Bill,” a flurry of proposals to reform agencies where entanglement with vested interests is structurally embedded or contracted from inception,” Salceda said.

Salceda, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, made the proposal in light of the recent Forbes article titled “Duterte Is Turning Philippines Into a More Corrupt and Less Democratic State”.

The Bicol lawmaker slammed the Jan. 24 article for its claim that the Philippines has become “more corrupt” under Duterte’s leadership.

He argued the article’s basis—the Corruption Perceptions Index—is a “highly subjective and simplistic measure” that does not fully take into account the situation on the ground.

He also said the article has been written by “just another foreigner with very little real understanding of the Philippine situation, not to mention any significant grasp of even the most basic facts about the country.”

“The article portrays the country as an oppressed nation with an ineffective and possibly corrupt leader, when the same leader is enjoying record high popularity from the only people whose opinions of his government matter to him – the Filipino people,” he said. (PNA)