A matter of honor

I saw Magtanggol Gatdula, the NBI director, and his lawyer, Abraham Espejo, on TV last week. Gatdula was tearful. It was all he could do to talk as he choked on his emotions. When he did manage to say something, he said that all his life he had tried to keep a good name, and now this. It was a bitter pill to swallow.

It was left to Espejo to dispute P-Noy’s decision to fire his client. The President had done so earlier that day, saying, “At the end of the day, the head of the principal agencies will be a person who has our trust and confidence. The trust is no longer there.” Espejo lamented the fact that Gatdula was not accorded due process, not being given a chance to face his accusers or submit an answer to the allegations against him.

Those allegations, as most everybody knows by now, are that Gatdula participated in kidnapping, detaining and extorting money from a Japanese woman named Noriyo Ohara. Ohara was an illegal alien in the Philippines fleeing the Yakuza. She had been living with some Filipino friends until the NBI got wind of it and subjected her to that ordeal. Gatdula was ordered by the Department of Justice to turn Ohara over to the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation but he refused. That is insubordination, P-Noy said, for which he was firing him.

Leila de Lima herself revealed that the case against Gatdula was damning. The only thing that remained to be determined was the extent of his participation in the kidnapping and extortion, whether he actively participated in it or had merely gone along with it. But there was little doubt he had a hand in it.

I got interested in this development, notwithstanding that it seems minor compared to the one thing that has gripped the country’s attention and captured its imagination, which is the impeachment trial of Renato Corona, because this bears mightily on it. Is P-Noy right to fire Gatdula? But of course he is, notwithstanding that Gatdula presented an object of pity last week. Corona as well presents an object of pity. But more so the people they have trampled upon.

This is not the first time P-Noy has fired an official, nor will it be the last. Last year, he fired Angelito Alvarez, the customs commissioner. Alvarez also at the time protested his innocence, and his supporters loudly lamented the fact that he was not given due process, he was never given the chance to submit an answer to the corruption charges against him.

The objections miss the point, which is the nature of a public official. What is a public official? What qualifications does he need to be a public official? When does he cease to deserve to be a public official?

The answers to these questions should be plain enough, yet it is a testament to what the previous regime has done that we have forgotten them. Or it is a testament to what Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has done, which was to turn the world on its head, that we are at pains to know them. The answers are plain and simple: A public official is someone who enjoys the public trust. A public official is someone whose exemplary behavior, along with his exceptional abilities, has entitled him to his high office. A public official is someone who deserves to hold his office only so long as he can prove himself morally, as much as intellectually, fit for it.

A public official who ceases to enjoy the public trust has no right to remain a public official. A public official whose behavior has been less than exemplary, never mind downright scandalous, has no right to remain a public official. A public official who has proven himself morally unfit, even if he remains intellectually capable—especially if he is so, since shrewd blackguards are far more dangerous than dumb ones—has no right to remain a public official.

In short, public office is something we regard highly, or ought to, and apply the highest standards to. It is not something we regard lowly, or ought not to, and apply the basest standards to. Yet the latter is one of the banes Arroyo brought upon this nation, and it’s all we can do even now to push it back. What was a public official during Arroyo’s time? A public official was someone who merely enjoyed her trust. They could be murderers for all she cared (the Ampatuans were) and they could remain public officials for as long as they wanted. A public official was someone who did not need to comport herself admirably, all she had to do was make sure no one can prove her to have stolen the vote—and it helped to buy the courts (and Congress) for that.

The right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty is a right that has to do only with freedom, it is not a right that has to do with holding public office. Until Gatdula can be proven to have conspired with the kidnapping, he may not be jailed. That doesn’t mean he may not be fired. His conduct, particularly in refusing to turn Ohara over to the BID, has been less than exemplary, if not downright suspicious. That is ground for dismissal.

Which brings us to Corona’s plight. Unfortunately, no one can fire him, the Judiciary exists independently of the Executive and Congress, as Corona’s lawyers love to remind the world. But the fact that we are grinding out his trial today must suggest that we are still mired in the culture Arroyo perpetuated in this country, the one that says the chief justice himself, whom we presume to be the fount of wisdom, can stay on until he has been proven to be an out-and-out criminal. It’s a profoundly cynical concept of public office and public official, one that allowed the gallery of rogues who were Arroyo’s officials, including the carryover Corona, to pester us for so long.

Public office is a matter of honor, and high office a matter of high honor. But tell that to the crowning glory of Gloria.