No small amount

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“Civil Service Commission chairperson Aileen Lourdes Lizada said the country’s laws are clear on government officers and personnel accepting gifts.

“Besides, public service is public service. There is no other definition to it.

“Unless

a crystal-clear gift policy can ensure that the line between corruption and acceptable is clearly understood, then it remains open to abuse.

“Right

now, it seems the heavy responsibility of determining the limitations of a gift-giving policy falls on the CSC, which can only cite the two existing bases for an ethical service in government.

Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission Commissioner Greco Belgica missed the point completely when he tried to justify an amount he pegged government workers may accept as gifts.

For him, an insignificant gift or token could be as much as P100,000, an amount he said is equivalent to his salary but which is astronomical for the clerical or contractual workers in government agencies.

Belgica made an example to explain his logic.

He mentioned a scene where a government worker finds a lost bag containing a million pesos at the airport and returns it to the owner. The owner shows his gratitude by rewarding the government worker with P100,000.

The amount could be nominal to the owner, but the government worker who found his bag should accept his gift, he said. It was given freely, to follow his logic.

That is not corruption, according to Belgica, since the government worker did not ask for money in returning the bag.

The amount, Belgica said, is insignificant for him, saying he gets the same figure for his monthly salary.

“That’s how much I get paid a month,” he said. Will he accept that amount if it was given to him? He said he would not.

“That’s why I have been saying it’s a case-to-case basis,” Belgica said.

But we have laws to answer this question.

Civil Service Commission chairperson Aileen Lourdes Lizada said the country’s laws are clear on government officers and personnel accepting gifts.

Lizada cited Republic Act 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, which states that solicitation or acceptance of gifts by government workers is prohibited.

Lizada was also clear that the law also allows scholarships, grants and other offers from foreign governments. She also mentioned RA 3019, or the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, which states that asking gifts in exchange for favors is not allowed.

Belgica said gifts are fine if they are not solicited. Lizada, however, was clear on the law against acceptance of gifts.

“There are mechanisms in place and this comes in the form of laws,” she said. What both officials did not talk about during one television interview was the impropriety of government workers accepting gifts or tokens, however nominal they cost. It is not proper. Period. And the laws are clear about it. Any bribe can now be claimed as a gift — ostensible as it may appear, like a token — but it does not change the fact that laws are violated even if only a slice of cake changed hands.

Besides, public service is public service. There is no other definition to it.

It does not require extra payment from those served, its true value hinged on the satisfaction of having rendered service to the people with nothing expected in return.

Corruption, however, has become endemic in our system — both in government and in private dealings. There is no government official who could honestly claim to have lost his personal money in the service of the people. Most of them retire with their wealth improved by several folds. If they ever retire.

Belgica only sent mixed signals to the government workers with his statement. I don’t think he crafted it well before he faced his audience.

All leaders try to tell the people that they will cleanse government of corruption once they get the mandate. Majority of them failed because government workers have developed their distorted values that range from, say P20 a trip for jeepneys in illegal transport terminals.

It is not much. Just nominal.

But it is still wrong.

While P100,000 may seem “insignificant” to some, it can mean heaven and earth for others.

Citing the said amount (or any amount at all) was definitely a bad idea for Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission (PACC) Commissioner Greco Belgica to do. He may have gone further as to say the practice of giving gifts to government officials is on a “case to case” basis — meaning he knows that judging an ethics-based situation can be ‘difficult’ as to be impossible to resolve satisfactorily — but the fact remains that we have laws against it.

That Department of Justice (DoJ)

Secretary Menardo Guevarra has asked the Civil Service Commission

(CSC) to set the guidelines on what constitutes as “insignificant” and therefore acceptable gifts also does not erase the icky feeling.

There is no definition under the law, the DoJ head said, that specifies what is “significant” or “insignificant,” adding that both terms could be “relative.” There being no set amount, he feels it necessary to draw up the limits in such a practice.

It is not at all strange that the

President Rodrigo Duterte’s words before an audience made up of members of the Philippine National

Police recently could spark these discussions. What is strange is that he said it at all.

Following his State of the Nation Address targeting corruption as one of the main priority battles of the Duterte administration, this talk of acceptable cash gifts has had anti-corruption advocates on a rampage.

Naturally. A report in January this year says the Philippines received “a score of 36 in 2018 from 34 in 2017 in the Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index with the country placing 99th in 2018 from 111st in 2017.”

The Palace at the time “attributed the improvement in the Philippines’ global anti-corruption ranking to what it called accountability and good governance measures.”

Midway into the year, President Duterte showed his frustration at the sheer difficulty of fighting corruption, but resolved to tackle it anyway.

One might say this gift talk is a first step to clarifying concepts. Unless a crystal-clear gift policy can ensure that the line between corruption and acceptable is clearly understood, then it remains open to abuse.

Do we even agree on what is ethical and unethical in the practice of giving gifts? And who is to say what one person feels about the practice even when it is legally acceptable?

A gift is anything of value given for different reasons. Determining these reasons, and therefore if they are proper or improper, can be another hole we may likely fall into one of these days.

As the Justice chief explained, “It’s hard to give specific guidelines because even under the law, it depends on the local customs and traditions of the place where the gift-giving happens, so it’s really a relative term.”

In the face of such vagueness, perhaps an ethics officer should be appointed. Yet who would want to be this paragon of virtue?

Right now, it seems the heavy responsibility of determining the limitations of a gift-giving policy falls on the CSC, which can only cite the two existing bases for an ethical service in government: the 1989 Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees (RA 6713) and the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (RA 3019).

One supposes that in the absence of the very specific guidelines detailing what should be “insignificant” in the eyes of the law, the doorway to abuse is that much wider.

The call to end corruption resounds in us all. In the end, it remains the individual’s call to remain strong against all its forms.