Viewpoints
Public Office
By +Oscar V. Cruz JCD
“Public office is a public trust. Public officers…must at all times be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives” ( Phil. Constitution: Article XI, Section 1)
The above cited glaring illusory provision of no less than the Fundamental Law of the land, has the following dismaying version in ground reality: “Public office is a private commission. Public officers…must at all times be unaccountable to the people, serve them with utmost irresponsibility, dishonesty, perfidy, and inefficiency, act with disloyalty and injustice, and lead luxurious lives.” This translation is unauthorized yet more tenable and credible – especially when thinking of the high ranking supposedly public officials in the Country, together with many other infamous national and notorious district officials of government.
This is certainly not meant to offend anybody but simply intended to say the truth that respects no party, that bows to no potentate, and that a good number of the people already know well. As usual, the version is sad but true. It may be derogatory yet objective. Such precious and admirable realities as “integrity” and “justice”, plus the mandate to “lead modest lives”, appear rather too quixotic to append to many of the present crop of government officials from the highest down to the lowest levels of public service.
It would not be hard to imagine what a great Country the Philippines would be, and what a happy people the Filipinos could be – if only the above cited constitutional provision were even but party observe by those concerned. Precisely, it the Philippines is that underdeveloped, it is because it has long remained a topnotcher in the shameful list of nations wallowing in graft and corrupt practices. And taking into consideration all pertinent surveys made in the Country by different civil entries with regularity, it wherefore stands to reason that Filipinos by and large distrust their leader at the top of the heap of those faithfully and ardently engaging in government self-service.
This is exactly why all May 2010 political candidates – and this means all of them – for national and district public offices, have but one substantially the same composite battle cry: No to corruption. Away with poverty. Yes to imprisonment of crooks even with formidable ranking and titles. These merely validate the saying that there is a limit addiction to power and in the accumulation of wealth.
Caution: There is absolutely nothing in this item, saying or even the least insinuating that the above quoted official provision of the Constitution be changed to the private version made thereof.
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