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Friday, March 29, 2024

No need for grandstanding

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The Palace is right in calling out a board member of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, who has been vocal about alleged corrupt practices in the agency.

In a statement over the weekend, Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said PCSO board member Sandra Cam is free to resign anytime from her post if she can no longer stomach the alleged corrupt practices in the agency.

Cam, once the president of something called the Philippine Whistleblowers Association of the Philippines, had asked President Rodrigo Duterte to be relieved of her duties because she could no longer stomach the corruption there.

No need for grandstanding

In particular, she renewed her allegations of corruption in small town lotteries led by retired police or military generals.

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But Panelo correctly pointed out that Cam, appointed to the PCSO by the President in 2017, could resign any time and should file a formal complaint against the officials that she accused of being corrupt.

The Palace spokesman advised Cam to file charges against the corrupt PCSO officials and substantiate her “serious” allegations about the supposed irregularities in the internal decision-making process of the agency.

“We asked her to formally submit in writing her complaint to the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission, which is directly under the Office of the President so that it would be acted on accordingly,” the Palace official said.

Panelo added: “President Rodrigo Duterte is beholden to no one.”

“He will not spare even his close friends and long-time allies in his drive to weed out corruption in the bureaucracy. We repeat: There are no sacred cows in this administration,” he said.

“We thus urge the likes of Ms. Cam to come forward and expose government shenanigans and malfeasance if she knows any,” he added.

Panelo assured Cam and other whistleblowers that they have the President’s ear in this regard.

We stand behind all efforts to expose wrongdoing, in or out of government, but we agree with the Palace that these should follow proper procedure. If the PCSO board member has evidence of such wrongdoing, it is her duty to report this to the proper authority—in this case, the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission.

By the same token, of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to accuse your political opponents of wrongdoing. The correct way is to file a case in court; the wrong way is to call a press conference and present some arbitrary diagram that purports to show wrongdoing without providing a single shred of evidence to support it.

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