When I first heard the news that Police Director General Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa was to be investigated, motu proprio, by the Office of the Ombudsman for his recent trip to the United States (to watch the Pacquiao-Vargas fight), all expenses (travel and accommodation) paid for by boxing champion-senator Manny Pacquiao, I simply took everything with a grain of salt.
“Alas,” I said to myself, “someone from the Office of the Ombudsman might have felt he/she was becoming KSPD (kulang sa pansin ng bayan or wanting of public attention ) lately. What better way, indeed, to restore a declining name recall than to be in the news alongside two of the most popular characters in our midst and times—Manny and Bato! And so, I let pass the news as insignificant, hoping it would die down in due course.
But when it didn’t, and instead continued to snowball, and it became that the honorable Lady Ombudsman herself had initiated the investigation, I could not help but knit my brows in disbelief, mutely remarking, “What managerial indiscretion! Couldn’t she be a little bit more circumspect?”
Let’s get real. Who among us, whether belonging to the private or to the public-service sector, can indeed claim to be so clean and moral as to have never ever accepted a gift from a friend? We can all agree that it is but natural for everybody who does to simply remain silent about it, especially if, so to speak, there were some strings attached to the gift.
But in this case between Bato and Manny, there is simply no reason to believe there was one. Otherwise, why would one so openly boast of it upon arriving from the United States, while the other, with equal pride, forthwith publicly confirmed it? Must Bato, then, be investigated and/or punished for his sheer honesty and sincerity? And why only Bato?
I realize that there is a law penalizing a public official for simply accepting a gift from anybody. Even as the law may be apart and different from the more commonly known Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, we can all assume that the law’s basic rationale and objective is one and the same: to control bribery in the public service.
Doesn’t it take two to tango? If so, why not also investigate and/or punish Senator Pacquiao? This will certainly make the controversy worse, with some perhaps even suspecting that Pacquiao might be in Bato’s list of drug users. But methinks that is the only way to put logic and better prudence into what the Lady Ombudsman is currently becoming so noisy about. “Yang puno kung mabunga, binabato.”
RUDY L. CORONEL, rudycoronel 2004@gmail.com