MANIFESTATION ON ETHICS COMMITTEE
COMPLAINT AND RESOLUTION
SENATOR M. A. MADRIGAL
8 October 2008
Mr. President:
Permit me to make a manifestation before this chamber, referring my complaint against the Senate President, and asking the Committee on Ethics to investigate the complaint I hereby submit for their consideration and urgent action.
We have long been criticized by the public for making charges, while failing to substantiate those charges. The complaint I am referring to the Ethics Committee is not in the nature of wide-sweeping yet essentially unproveable set of allegations.
These are findings based on fact, based on actual documents, and on real and binding provisions of our Constitution and our laws.
They are, furthermore, first and foremost the obligation, morally, legally, and politically, of this chamber to receive, study, deliberate and act upon. For they involve the behavior of our chamber’s presiding officer.
This is the proper forum, the deserving forum, for the cataloging and consideration, of the wrongdoings of one of our peers. It is incumbent on us, collectively, that is, institutionally, to confront what my complaint contains.
In the broadest strokes, this complaint submits that the Senate President has made a career of perverting the public good and public funds, for private pecuniary gain, with utter contempt for the laws and ethical conduct required of public officials, in particular, elected officials.
The determination of the Senate President’s obvious and damning conflict of interest, in proposing and benefitting from, public programs and public works to his own personal financial gain, will be easy. The relevant Constitutional provisions and laws have been enumerated in my complaint. The specific instances and circumstances by which the Senate President violated the laws are listed down.
The opportunities the Senate President took, directly, that is, personally, by his own intervention in the bureaucracy and his participation in the bending of relevant laws and regulations, are amply listed in my complaint. They are supported by documentation, and they serve to underscore that the Senate President cannot, by any sober measure, plead extenuating or mitigating circumstances to reduce either his culpability or his guilt.
His companies profited; he profited; he intervened in the bureaucracy and helped pass laws to ensure his private gain when we have a great number of laws meant to prevent exactly what has transpired.
As legislators we are tasked with oversight over the executive and deliberating on legislation. We are not here to be fixers, pimping out legislation in order to line our own or anyone else’s pockets.
We are here to be public servants; to work for the public good even if it comes at our own personal expense. We are certainly not here to craft laws while trying to find crafty ways to ignore the very same laws we are sworn not only to uphold, but improve if need be.
Mr. President, let me repeat, for the record and for the consideration of my colleagues, that what I am submitting to the Ethics Committee is not an unsubstantiated collection of allegations, but fully-documented and thoroughly-researched charges.
Charges that, if soberly scrutinized, will certainly compel action on the part of this chamber’s Ethics Committee.
I hope that the Senate President, who has, so far, met this whole issue with the most obstinate silence, will finally take this opportunity to conscientiously and thoroughly dispute the charges.
It is for the Ethics Committee to approach my complaint with an open mind, for indeed, all must be assumed innocent until proven guilty. I know that the evidence is overwhelming so that guilt will be the ultimate finding of any Ethics Committee that takes its obligations seriously. Nonetheless, the Senate President should be accorded every opportunity to vindicate himself.
Continued silence will do neither himself nor the Senate any good. A thorough threshing of the facts may ultimately prove politically costly to him but institutionally, legally, and dare I say, morally valuable to this Senate and the country.
Ilea iacta est. The die is cast; the ethical Rubicon has been crossed; presented with a legal, financial, and ethical Gordian Knot of his own creation, the Senate Presdent’s vindication or ultimate condemnation requires that knot being sliced through, with the razor-sharp sword of impartial justice and the intellectual rigor and objectivity that are the finest traditions of this chamber.
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