Conflicts of interest in public offices

The legal doctrine of conflict of interest is a legal principle that abhors and prohibits a situation whenever an individual or personal business, family, friendship, financial or social affiliations have the imminent and strong possibility of compromising, diluting, influencing, or jeopardizing his official judgment, decision, or action at work.

Because of this principle, a senator whose family has a huge business empire engaged in massive housing, water distribution or electric power distribution and related businesses should not be assigned the Committee on Public Works or that of Environment. The Senate president should have considered high moral principles in making committee assignments, or at least, a modicum of sensitivity to the social and political implications.

Because of this principle, when I was DOLE undersecretary, I begged off from standing as wedding sponsor to any of my subordinates for if I would not do so, my decisions related to appointments, promotions, salary increases, transfers of assignments, travel, and seminar opportunities would be placed under serious clouds of doubts and suspicions. As a professor of Law, I also refuse to act as ninong to any of my students to avoid suspicion of bias in the giving of grades.

The congressmen who are also public works contractors and whose wives, girlfriends, or both, are also owning businesses supplying services, goods, or materials to the local government units under their constituencies, these are palpable illustrations of conflicts of interest. There are congressmen who own construction companies. They should have unloaded their shares of stocks the moment they take their oaths of office.

There are provincial officials who are owners of manpower agencies supplying outsourced workers to the provincial governments or any of its component LGUs. These are criminal acts and violations of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. They should have disclosed this from the start and they should have unloaded these business ownerships prior to assuming public office. Of course, they might have used dummies, but what they can legally do frontally, they can neither do the other way.

There are officials whose family members are engaged in the quarry business and these officials are the approving authority. When the purchaser of goods and services and the seller of such goods and services are the same persons or family, then there is clear conflict of interest. If appointing a relative constitutes nepotism, then approving a purchase order aimed at favoring the business of a close relative is also a corrupt practice and a crime of graft.

If we impose and enforce strictly the rule against conflict of interest, I strongly suspect that almost all of the local officials, congressmen and senators and even national agency officials would all face charges before the Ombudsman, the Sandiganbayan or become subject to impeachment if they occupy impeachable positions.

Indeed, a public office is always a public trust. Any conflict of interest is a breach of that trust. We, the people, should not close our eyes to all these blatant travesties before our very eyes. If we do not object, who will? If not immediately, when can we start holding public officials accountable?