Philippine Corruption From Wikipedia Data

Source: Dev.to

Findings

• Analyzed 51 documented corruption cases from Wikipedia.
• Identified 11 distinct types of corruption that recur frequently.
• Kickbacks are the most common, appearing in 15.7 % of cases.
• Bribery follows at 13.7 %.
• Election fraud and overpricing each account for 11.8 %.
• Many cases involve multiple corruption types; for example, the PDAF scam is linked to nine different categories.

The Corruption Network 🕸️

• Blue nodes represent individual cases.
• Red nodes represent corruption types; larger red nodes indicate a higher number of cases in that category.
• Notable co‑occurrences include election fraud and nepotism alongside financial crimes.

A Historical Pattern Emerges

• Marcos Era: Dominated by “plunder + embezzlement.”
• Post‑EDSA: Documentation of cases declines.
• Arroyo Era: Election fraud becomes prominent.
• PDAF Era (2013): Systematic pork‑barrel abuse.
• Recent Years: Issues in healthcare and procurement emerge.

Each political era appears to develop its own “corruption signature.”

Behind the Scenes 🔧

1. Data Collection: Used wikipedia-api to retrieve content from corruption‑related pages.
2. Automated Categorization: Implemented a keyword‑based system to tag cases (e.g., “ghost projects,” “lagay,” “overpricing”).
3. Visualization: Leveraged networkx for network graphs and seaborn for the historical heatmap.
4. Manual Enhancement: Added well‑known cases that Wikipedia may not have fully categorized.

The analysis pipeline runs automatically and can be pointed at other Wikipedia corruption pages to reveal similar patterns.

My Takeaway

The volume of cases is less striking than the interconnectedness of corruption types. Financial crimes rarely occur in isolation; they often intertwine with election manipulation, nepotism, and contract rigging. Moreover, corruption evolves with each political generation, introducing new methods while retaining enduring tactics such as bribery and kickbacks.