Once more with feeling: Public duty is a public trust

The internecine feud between Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile and Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Pia Cayetano, Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Antonio Trillanes has brought upon all of them a common scourge: a headache—a kind of headache that respects no medicine, making all the paracetamol tablets in the world pieces of junk. It is the type of headache that rankles the nerves and makes the diastolic reading soar like a rocket.

Exhibit A is Senator Santiago, who had to see her doctor because of elevated blood pressure. It can also provoke someone into exhuming the carcass of a defunct  personal debt which, allegedly, is still unpaid.

Exhibit B is Enrile, who brandished on the Senate floor a nondescript sheet of paper—purportedly showing a debt of his former law firm partner, the late father of siblings Senators Alan and Pia—as if it were the Philippine flag, thus defying the dead man’s statute which states one who is in the arms of Morpheus cannot be accused. For this below-the-belt punch, Senate President Enrile, a master tactician, apologized quickly.

The MOOE (maintenance and other operating expenses) supplemental funds, the root cause of the whole imbroglio, are painted with sharp political overtones hinting that between the Senate President and the favored senators, there exists a quid pro quo: strange words which are a euphemism for “favor swapping.” Some got more while others got picayune amounts, which prompted the disfavored senators to spring into action.

And the giving was done at the height of rumors about an impending Senate leadership change, which Enrile did not take well. He put up a gambit, a blitzkrieg that “paid off.”

Government funds must be disbursed according to the guidelines set by law. Outside these guidelines, disbursements may go beyond a mere bureaucratic faux pas and can be unconstitutional. Expect more locking of horns at the Supreme Court as earlier insinuated by Senator Santiago.

The paradigm shifts with respect to the P250,000 Christmas cash gifts. Cash gifts from government funds in the name of Christmas may be unconstitutional. There is in it excessive entanglement of the state with religion as the money is given to endorse a particular religion (Christianity) with no neutral or secular purpose than to promote and favor the aforenamed religion. This is a literal, broad and liberal interpretation of Section 6, Article II of the Constitution which states in part… “the State cannot set up a church, whether or not supported with public funds; nor aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.”

I am a Christian who believes in Christmas but everyone has the duty to evaluate, understand and do well what the law says.

Public office is a public trust, and this guiding principle must be guarded at all times like the statue of Rizal standing at the park bearing his name.

Don’t let it run away from sight!

—MANUEL BIASON, [email protected]