MANILA: Internet-savvy Philippine President Benigno Aquino is opening the doors of government through cyberspace, promising unprecedented public access to help fight entrenched corruption.

Filipinos are among the world's most enthusiastic users of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and Aquino says he wants this huge online community to become a new force in stamping out graft.

“We cannot underestimate the potency or the power of digital media,” said presidential spokesman Herminio Coloma, who headed a project launched this week linking Aquino's website (www.president.gov.ph) to social networking platforms.

“It is a very viral, contagious and infectious process that really creates and multiplies awareness all throughout.” Coloma called on Filipino netizens to go to Aquino's various web pages and report anyone involved in corruption.

They can also give general comments about how to improve government operations as part of Aquino's broader pledge to ensure his six-year rule is more transparent than his graft-tainted predecessors'.

Aquino may not necessarily be able to personally read or answer all the complaints filtered from Twitter or Facebook, but a special communications team will carefully comb through all the complaints, Coloma said.

Aquino won presidential elections in May by a landslide after promising to stamp out corruption that for decades has infected Philippine society.

By using the Internet, he is aiming to give ordinary Filipinos a sense that they can finally stand up to corrupt officials or the ultra rich who have long been able to avoid scrutiny.

“This will generate a groundswell of public participation in good governance,” Coloma said.

The finance department is running a parallel website where anyone can anonymously complain about corrupt government officials or provide details about tax cheats and smugglers.

It is also linked to Facebook and has already received 800 reports in recent weeks, some of which have become the basis for investigations, the government said.

Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares told AFP her office was receiving up to 20 tips a day against tax evaders through her Facebook page as well as through dedicated telephone hotlines she set up.

“You can see a lot of people coming out. In Facebook, people added me up as a friend and posted their complaints,” she said.

“People feel they have a stake in this government.” Nick Gonzalez, a web analyst who operates CheckFacebook.com, ranks the Philippines as the seventh-biggest market in the world for the social networking site with nearly 16 million users.

That means nearly a fifth of the population use Facebook.

Aquino's campaign has made a promising start – over 16,000 hits in the first two hours of his website's launch on Monday alone.

Astro del Castillo, director of the Association of Securities Analysts of the Philippines, welcomed the government's online efforts.

But, amid a woeful history of previous government's launching high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful campaigns against corruption, he said it was too early to say whether Aquino's online anti-graft effort would succeed.

“We hope he will be able to catch crooks and scallywags in government,” he said.

“(But) we will only know that it is effective once we see them taking action on the complaints,” del Castillo said. —AFP