Return the P500,000 if it can’t be justified

GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, November 16, 2007

Pampanga Gov. Ed Panlilio has admitted under oath having received P500,000 cash from Malacañang. But he said it was not a bribe because there were no strings attached.

Panlilio, a Catholic priest, is so candid, which is why his parishioners love him. He is also so naive, which is why the provincial board led by the vice governor and most of the town mayors run circles around him.

Of course there were no visible strings attached to the five bundles of P1,000 bills in a gift bag. That’s because real bribes come masked — for many reasons. The briber doesn’t push too hard lest he embarrass the bribee, or they both pretend it’s innocuous or else they land in jail together. They also employ artifice to clear their conscience. Bribery has become an art, and so has its cover-up. Through the years givers and takers have contrived ways to make the crime acceptable. Worldliness, as David Wells said, is what any particular culture does to make sin look normal and righteousness look strange.

But there was a veiled string to the cash doled in Malacañang on Oct. 11 not only to Panlilio, but also to 190 congressmen and several governors. The legislators were invited there to breakfast and the local execs to lunch to talk about the impeachment rap against Gloria Arroyo. By commonsense, if impeachment is discussed in Malacañang, it is to egg the invitees to resist; it certainly can’t be to persuade them to damn the President. Both meetings culminated in the distribution of cash. Rep. Benny Abante, a Protestant preacher, narrated that men in white barong had filed in from a side door, while Arroyo was still around, to hand out identical gift bags containing P500,000 each. Bulacan Gov. Joselito Mendoza, recounting his own run-in, said he was called to an anteroom, where an Undersecretary of Interior was sitting, and was given two bags, one each for him and Panlilio.

The giver to Abante is a Deputy Speaker and high officer of Arroyo’s Kampi party. The undersecretary in Mendoza’s case reports to the Secretary of Interior who is also the chairman of Kampi. Panlilio swears he is not a member of Kampi (so does Abante), and thus cannot be a recipient of the party’s generosity. There is a parallel claim by the governors’ league that it too gave away money to first-term members who need to endear themselves to constituents. Panlilio doesn’t believe that too, because Mendoza never said anything about it in serving as delivery boy of his share. Besides, the bundles of pesos given to Panlilio were marked Bank of Commerce-Balibago (Angeles City) branch. The bank is not one of the league’s three depositories. Then, there is the certification from the Malacañang finance unit, composed of career officials, that it wasn’t the one that disbursed the funds. With such circumstances, Panlilio should doubt the source of the money. Discounting Kampi, the governors’ league and Malacañang-finance as the giver, it can only be a bribe from another source. Panlilio should look at it from the point of view not of a priest receiving a donation to charity, but of a public official whose loyalty is being bought.

To be fair, Panlilio does now question the source. This is because no credible group has come out to show disbursement papers or demand from him a receipt. Panlilio does not see it from the point of view of law, to which he is bound. Sen. Francis Escudero cited the decree against indirect bribery, its definition in the Penal Code, and the Code of Conduct that forbids public officials from accepting any gift of value. He also read the rule that requires big government disbursements to be made through checks accompanied by vouchers. All the laws were broken because the money was a bribe. To that, Panlilio still begged the senators for new legislation.

Panlilio has been a priest for 25 years and a governor for less than five months. His ignorance of the finer points of law is understandable. But he must know the adage that bribery and theft are first cousins. Money given away that fateful day in Malacañang — at least P160 million by intelligent estimates — could only have come from crooked means. It is such corruption that perpetuates poverty and leads people to despair, sometime suicide.

For this reason, Panlilio has no choice but to return the money. It is the right thing to do. He must give it back to the source, Mendoza, with a note that the latter return it to the briber. Mendoza had said he would accept his P500,000-share only if Panlilio did, so if Panlilio rejects it now even if belatedly, then he must follow suit if true to his word.

Moreover, Panlilio must offer to turn state witness in the criminal case filed against him, Mendoza, Abante and the bribers. That way he can prove that he really is different from the dirty politicos he defeated last May, and the vice governor, the provincial board members and the mayors who want to cut him down. It will be a tough call for Panlilio. But then, true leadership is never easy.