Officials behaving badly

The recent shocking reports involving Philippine Ambassador to Brazil Marichu Mauro is the latest in what seems to be an outbreak of obnoxious behavior by public officials, following the display of arrogance some two weeks prior by Environment Undersecretary Benny Antiporda and Metropolitan Manila Development Authority spokesperson Celine Pialago, and the red-tagging of several celebrities last week by Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr., spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict.

Add to that Tourism Region 1 Director Jeff Ortega’s toadying introduction of Bongbong Marcos as “former senator and vice president” during a tourism event this week despite the late dictator’s son losing the post in the 2016 elections, and you have a veritable epidemic of public officials behaving badly.

Mauro was caught on video maltreating her house-help, a 51-year-old Filipino domestic who has since flown home. The video, submitted by an unnamed employee who had witnessed the incidents, showed Mauro slapping, pulling the maid by her ear and whacking her with an umbrella on several occasions. Shown on Brazil TV news, the video prompted Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. to order the diplomat’s recall, “to enable the DFA to conduct an expedient and thorough investigation into the incidents of physical abuse.”

The incident was made more deplorable in that Mauro, as a representative of the Philippine government, was tasked with protecting our workers abroad. How can we expect respect for Filipino workers toiling in foreign lands when our very own officials abuse them?

Ortega’s Instagram post of his controversial introduction of the Marcos scion, meanwhile, provoked outrage from netizens who pointed out that the tourism official was essentially betraying the duly-constituted government he was part of. With Leni Robredo in office for the past four years as the duly proclaimed Vice President, why would Ortega choose to follow his own version of reality? Worse, why foist what amounts to fake news on the public?

Netizens have asked Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat: Doesn’t this show Ortega’s contempt for constitutionally established authorities and disrespect for the government that sworn him into office? Puyat could only issue a limp statement reminding her officials and employees to “perform and discharge their duties with the highest degree of excellence and professionalism.”

Ortega’s glaring act of misinformation and revisionism while on public duty makes the best case for why the bill proposing to declare Marcos’ birthdate, Sept. 11, as Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Day in Ilocos Norte should be sent to the dustbin. The bill has earned the vote of the usual suspects in the Senate, Sen. Nancy Binay purportedly among them. But in a statement, Binay — whose father, former vice president Jejomar “Jojo” Binay, was part of a lawyers’ group that actively fought the Marcos dictatorship — said she did not vote for the bill and would not support any measure “that would cause historical revisionism.”

Rightly so. Even now, sycophantic delusions like Ortega’s are being peddled before the public (and proudly posted on social media by the perpetrator himself); an official government commemoration of the Marcos name — and by extension legacy — would only validate and fortify such baseless thinking, allowing parts of the country to live in an alternate reality and sowing further discord among citizens.

In the wake of the antics of MMDA’s Pialago, and before that the widely scorned hubris of DENR’s Antiporda — both incidents underscoring the dispiriting deterioration and wanton denigration of public office apparently happening in government — Civil Service Commissioner Aileen Lizada had to remind government officials to “take the higher ground” and “avoid any appearance of impropriety affecting the integrity of (their agency).” Government officials remain as such 24 hours a day, Lizada added, and are always seen as the face of the agencies they represent.

That principle is never more true than in the case of Ambassador Mauro, whose abusive demeanor, made public on Brazilian TV, shames the country and people she represents to the world.

Lizada’s advice is based on the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, which should be the Bible of every civil servant. According to Republic Act No. 6713, public officials and employees must “uphold the time-honored principle of public office being a public trust.” Whether ambassador, undersecretary, spokesperson, or mere giddy functionary, anyone in government who can’t live up to that principle has no business at all holding public office.