Legislative negligence and a personal story

The information could even be construed as drawn from primary data gathered in the field, which is why I failed to detect it as having been taken from a published source. Furthermore, the source, a Naga City brochure, was listed among our references. Despite this, my enemies used this against me and tried to charge me with plagiarism. These were not ideas we stole but simply an inadvertent omission in placing within the text the source that was otherwise listed as a reference.

Fortunately, the grievance board rejected the charges of plagiarism but nevertheless found me liable for simple negligence. The price I had to pay went beyond the onemonth suspension but became the trigger that led to my resignation from the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) at the time. The period I was suspended coincided with my scheduled departure for a back-to-back fellowship in Hawaii and in Thailand. I was informed that my leave papers would not be processed for final approval because of the suspension, but I was told that I could leave for Hawaii since I had already received approval from my department. Unfortunately, my enemies had a different idea; they decided to deny my leave and asked that I be made to fly back to the Philippines just to obtain the final signature of approval of the chancellor. I was already in the East-West Center in Honolulu at the time, and it would have been costly for me to fly back to UPLB just to be physically present for the approving party to sign the papers that were already in their possession. Obviously, someone was setting me up to be charged with absence without leave. I had no choice but to resign.

Not contented with this kind of harassment, these detractors twisted the result of my case and continued to peddle the lie that I was suspended for plagiarism and not for simple negligence. For an academic, being charged with plagiarism is almost like a death sentence. When the De La Salle University (DLSU), my new employer then, sought a background check in relation to my hiring, an official from my previous employer wrote a terse letter containing only the fact that I was suspended with the false allegation of plagiarism as the reason. Fortunately, then-DLSU vice president Brother Andrew Gonzales thought better and clarified the issue with UP officials concerned, who then countered the lie with factual findings. Obviously, my enemies were not satisfied and continued to slime me. They later found allies in my new university and used this allegation against me when I was already dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Again, they failed.

This canard alleging that I was suspended for plagiarism was politically weaponized against me when it was used by supporters of former vice president Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo to impugn my credibility and character. And once again, it was used as fodder for people to undermine my employment, with Robredo partisans using it as one of their lines of attack when they circulated an online petition for DLSU to fire me. Much later, the disinformation about my alleged plagiarism was again resurrected when some peers in the social science division of the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP) opposed my application for full regular membership. I was told that I had to undergo another investigation to clear up the issue for something that had already been investigated years ago. I was so offended that I resigned in protest as an associate member of the NRCP. As if this were not enough, those who opposed my return to UPLB used this lie to blacken my reputation and included the canard of my alleged plagiarism as one of the issues raised against me.

The reason for this lengthy retelling of what I have gone through because of a simple act of negligence, for which I already served the penalty but continued to hound me and undermined not only my employment but, more importantly, my honor, is to place this in contrast with how some of our more privileged public officials get away with their own acts of negligence in relation to their performance of their public duties.

While some acts of negligence have caused ordinary employees like myself to suffer the consequences, it is the Republic that is now suffering the consequences of gross acts of negligence by these privileged officials. A glaring example of this is the failure of those who drafted the 1987 Constitution to exercise due diligence in specifying the manner of voting when Congress acts as the body to amend or revise the Constitution. We could have been spared a lot of the trouble and the toxic recriminations now flying across the two chambers of Congress had the framers done their jobs diligently.

Recently, some senators, most notably Sen. Maria Josefa Imelda “Imee” Marcos, insinuated that there had been unauthorized budget insertions made by the House on the bicameral report, loudly complaining that she was surprised, only to find out that the said budget item was clearly stipulated in the bicameral report which she and other senators had signed. Still, Senator Marcos tried to avoid being cornered by pointing out that her signature was electronic and not a wet signature. But this begs the question of prudence, of how she could affix her e-signature on the document without reading it or allowing someone to affix such signature on a document that she had not read. If these acts had been committed by an ordinary employee, that person would have been already charged administratively.

It is indeed unfortunate that some negligent people are more privileged.