LocationsThe Future Is Asian—If Integrity Leads: New Frontiers of Anti-Corruption
December 9, 2025
Six years ago, I wrote a blog asking whether Asia’s future could break from its past if corruption continued to distort public institutions, development outcomes, and people’s trust. Today, on the International Day for Anti-Corruption, those reflections remain very relevant.
Across the region, corruption in the form of state capture, bribery, abuse of power, embezzlement, still shapes how public resources are misappropriated, how decisions are made for private interest, and whose voices are heard. It undermines climate resilience, diverts basic service delivery, dilutes economic competitiveness, and erodes social contracts.
In 2019, I argued the importance of adopting a systems approach to anti-corruption, connecting traditional and emerging levers of change such as access to information and transparency systems and tools; civic-tech innovations lead by civil society to detect, investigate and prevent corruption and the role of the private sector, specially international companies to raise good governance standards in emerging economies and using their economic influence to promote a level the playing field.
For 2025, part two reflects on a fundamental lever I overlooked: the role of ethical leadership and political will to break away from rooted corruption in politics and economic affairs.
When Integrity Becomes a Public Asset
Around the Asia-Pacific region, amid persistent corruption, we also see compelling examples of leaders demonstrating that public integrity is not only possible but also transformative in improving people’s lives.
Take Iloilo City in the Philippines, whose remarkable resilience to extreme weather is not accidental. Years of transparent, well-managed investments in river rehabilitation, drainage, environmental protection, and sustainable urban planning paid off when the city withstood the severe rainfall events of last October, which would have brought widespread devastation in other cities. Local observers documented how “this time, the river worked”—a direct result of long-term, corruption-free public investment, and our recent report “Rethinking Urban Governance for Tomorrow’s Cities in Asia-Pacific” also documented this case.
Iloilo City’s recognized governance transformation has been enabled by a leadership model rooted in public integrity, long-term vision, and collaborative, evidence-based decision-making. City leaders prioritized public value over patronage, investing transparently in river rehabilitation, drainage systems, environmental protection, and green urban development—projects delivered with strong technocratic capacity ensured minimal leakage. This integrity-driven approach built public trust, attracted partners, and strengthened institutional capability. At the same time, Iloilo embraced participatory governance, mobilizing communities, civil society, and business groups to plan and oversee.
This is what good governance and principled leadership with social purpose look like: development rooted in trust and technical expertise, not patronage; resilience built on sound public finance, not improvisation; long-term planning rather than transactional politics.
Leadership is Polycentric: New Voices, New Power, New Accountability
In Nepal, a new wave of young leaders—primarily from Gen Z—has used social media, civic tech, and collective mobilization to demand accountability and denounce systemic corruption. Their movement captured global attention as youth declared “enough is enough” and demanded a new political culture. These young people are not waiting for formal authority; they are exercising moral authority. They are reshaping public expectations and showing that integrity can be a mass movement, turning citizens' demands into practical governance solutions.
This year, as part of our commitment to supporting youth political empowerment, we convened and supported 15 Youth-Civic tech initiatives to share their accountability ideas and initiatives. SpeakUp Nepal, for instance, provides citizens with a digital platform to raise issues and follow government responses. In Mongolia, Voyager AI helps people access public procurement data. #Politicslk from Sri Lanka is a digital infotainment studio that offers creative formats to make political information engaging and understandable for youth and first-time voters. And AI4Gov from the Philippines uses artificial intelligence to help local governments manage and automate internal operations, streamlining day-to-day processes.
Leadership no longer belongs exclusively to traditional politicians, institutions, or bureaucracies. It is polycentric, emerging across communities, digital platforms, and new generations.
Integrity is a competitive advantage in the AI digital era.
Private Sector leaders and philanthropists are also demonstrating that integrity is not just ethical—it is a strategic advantage today. Trust is becoming a new currency in today’s environment of rapid information, misinformation, and disinformation.
In the rapidly evolving AI-driven digital economy, integrity becomes a strategic differentiator. As the OECD argues in its 2025 report, strong business integrity — reinforced through collective-action frameworks and transparent, consistently applied ethical standards — fosters trust among regulators, partners, and consumers, and helps build a level playing field where fair competition thrives. In such an environment, companies that embed integrity into their governance and operations are better positioned to attract investment, collaborate across sectors, secure digital supply-chain contracts, and innovate responsibly. In contrast, firms that cut corners face elevated risks of legal, reputational, or regulatory backlash.
High-quality, diverse, and objectively analyzed data is also crucial to ensure corruption does not remain anecdotal, revealing where corruption happens, how often, who is affected, and how reforms are making a difference.
This makes integrity not just a moral imperative, but a core business asset that supports sustainable growth, resilience, and competitive advantage in the digital age.
Looking ahead, accelerating progress against corruption requires a new frontier of governance—one that recognizes that anti-corruption goes beyond systems and laws; it is also about culture, leadership, and collective behavior to accelerate progress. As Anti-corruption practitioners, we must:
- Amplify the voice of leaders who prove that development succeeds when integrity leads. These leaders exist across institutions, local governments, civil society, youth movements, social entrepreneurs, and business innovators.
- Leverage digitalization, AI, and real-time data to strengthen open government, procurement transparency, and public-finance accountability.
- Build open-government ecosystems that make information transparent, empower citizens, and reinforce data-driven accountability.
- Rebuild integrity systems in public institutions at all levels—based on actionable codes of conduct, meritocracy, evidence-based decision making and results that deliver public value.
Corruption thrives in opacity, but integrity thrives in community. Asia-Pacific has no shortage of leaders—visible and invisible—who are driving this cultural shift. Our task now is to support them, learn from them, and scale the enabling conditions, helping them lead with integrity and accountability.
On this International Day for the Elimination of Corruption, let us commit not only to diagnosing the problem but also to elevating the leaders and practices across all sectors of government and society who are already showing us the solution to break with the legacy systems of corruption.