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How to Make Power Afraid

After hearing Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech and his invocation of Thucydides, I revisited the ancient aphorism that the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must—and for the first time, it clicked with brutal clarity in the context of DPWH corruption. What we routinely describe as “graft,” “anomalies,” or “bad apples” is better understood as the predictable outcome of a system that protects power rather than threatens it. Centralized presidential systems, by design, are corruption-friendly. Fixed terms function as shields, not mandates. Officials enjoy time-bound immunity, monopolies over budgets, and the luxury of waiting out scandals until public outrage expires. Under this architecture, corruption is not risky—it is rational. DPWH is not failing despite the system; it is succeeding because of it. In contrast, a federal parliamentary system is structurally hostile to corruption. Authority is fragmented across local jurisdictions, and executive power exists only so long as legislative confidence is maintained. Governments do not “finish terms” in the face of scandal—they collapse. Parties cannot outsource accountability to courts or commissions; they must self-police or suffer electoral annihilation. This is what distinguishes a parliamentary system from the parade of anti-corruption bodies we keep creating: it does not pretend to prevent corruption after the fact. It makes corruption politically lethal in real time. Instability is not a bug; it is the enforcement mechanism. Power is fragile, reputations are perishable, and misconduct instantly threatens survival. Seen through the Thucydidean lens Carney invoked, the lesson is unsettling but obvious: elites behave badly not because they are immoral, but because the system allows them to. If corruption persists, it is because we have engineered a government where accountability is slow, optional, and negotiable. The real reform, then, is not another watchdog, but a system of government that makes corruption too dangerous to attempt and too costly to survive. #Thucydides #FederalParliamentary #PMCarney