Where does Christmas gift end and corruption begin?

If you are heads of agencies implementing the tax laws, tariffs and custom duties and your son or daughter gets married two days before Christmas, may you properly allow one of the ninongs to write a check of one million as wedding gift, if the giver is the owner of a law firm specializing on taxation or a brokerage dealing with multi-millions worth of cargoes every day? My answer is you should not.

If another ninong opts to give the newly-weds a special Christmas gift in the form of an all-expenses one-month honeymoon to the Caribbean, with two-weeks of super luxury cruise, would you allow such gifts to be given, knowing fully well the fact that the giver transacts official business in your agency on a regular basis? Even if you perform your duties honestly and fairly, are you not giving the public impression of highly questionable fraternization with your stakeholders? Are you not putting a cloud of doubt into all your future official functions related to the giver's transactions in the agency that you head?

If you are a city or municipal mayor and you sign transaction documents or even vouchers and checks every month for the payment of outsourced services rendered to the city like garbage collection, security services or messengerial and janitorial services, would you agree to stand as wedding or baptismal sponsor to any of the family members of the owners of such companies providing such services? Or would you allow such businessmen to stand as sponsors in your social club's projects or civic organization's advocacies? Would you allow the Christmas season as an excuse to cross legally-defined boundaries?

As an upright, law-abiding and faithful public servant, it is not enough that you are honest. You must look honest, smell honest and avoid at all cost any appearance of dishonesty. You must never, never have your picture taken with Pogo operators nor be seen even in the door of a casino, a motel or a massage clinic. You should behave as a perfect icon of trustworthiness and integrity. My perfect example of this is retired Chief Justice Hilario G Davide, Jr. His name has never been stained even by a slightest suspicion of misdemeanor.

When I was a court interpreter while studying in law school at night, my boss was a completely honest judge. Every December, he would take a vacation because he never accepted any gift from lawyers and litigants. When he came back on the first working day in January, he would scold the Clerk of Court for receiving on his behalf all forms of gifts, even books, and religious articles. I had to return big bundles of gifts to many law firms and company offices. I also witnessed how he ordered the arrest of a businessman who was bringing a suitcase filled with dollar bills, attempting to bribe him.

He was a judge who used to walk from the courtroom to his law class at night. He was also my law professor and his integrity molded my character too. When his dilapidated old car would not be serviceable, he would return the monthly check representing the car maintenance allowance and gasoline allowance that he used to get from the city government. He lived a simple life and had no vice except smoking his big cigar which was his only indulgence. He even refused a simple gift from me, which was a first class tobacco harvested from my grandfather's farm in our hometown. Until today, his integrity still influences my decisions.

The bottomline is this: when someone attempts to give you a gift when he is not a member of your family, not your neighbor nor your friend, then ask yourself, what is the motive for this gift-giving? If there is conflict of interest, then politely refuse it. It is better to be careful than to be regretful.