Speech delivered before Philconsa at the Manila Golf Club, Makati City

We are deeply honored and privileged to have in our midst Attorney Marie Louise Araneta Marcos, also known as the First Lady of the Republic of the Philippines; the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, Sir; Executive Vice President Jose Leviste Jr.; Secretary General of Philconsa, Atty. Michelle Lazaro, Happy birthday, Attorney Michelle. Of course, Governors Mike Toledo and Tony Lopez, the officers and esteemed members of the Philippine Constitution Association. It is my honor to join you today in the celebration of Philconsa’s 65th anniversary.

This is actually my third time to have the privilege of standing before this revered organization composed not only of the members of the legal profession but civic leaders, business executives, educators and retired military flag officers as well.

The first time I was here was on October 23, 2001, four months into my first term as senator, and fresh from my stint as the Chief of the Philippine National Police.

Then Philconsa Chairman Conrado Estrella and the board invited me to share my thoughts on terrorism – a subject that, at that time, was already reshaping the security landscape of the world following the Osama bin Laden-led terrorist attacks in the United States.

Twelve years later, on October 24, 2013, I returned to speak on a different form of ‘terror’ – that time, aimed at our national treasury: the pork barrel system. Perhaps, Philconsa remembered that ten years before the Napoles scandal erupted, I had already urged my Senate colleagues to tear down the pork barrel system in my March 11, 2003 privilege speech entitled, “Living Without Pork” – and, if I may quote a portion of that privilege speech – “I now call for the scrapping of a very corrupt and corrupting system in our political institutions.”

It was during those times that I often referred to my battle against the pork barrel system as a “lonely crusade” for obvious reasons.

History ultimately vindicated my crusade when, ten years after that 2003 privilege speech on the Senate floor and just weeks after my 2013 Philconsa speech, the Supreme Court, in a landmark decision – declared that the Priority Development Assistance Fund, a.k.a. Pork barrel was unconstitutional.

I guess it is true what they say: sometimes, history gives you a glimpse of what lies around the corner before everyone else sees it.

Once an unpopular and inconvenient position of a lone voice in the Senate is now a landmark jurisprudence – one that carries a message that public money is never the politicians’ money.

Public authority is not about personal power. It belongs to the people.

Let me tell you a true story:

In the 1950s, a ten-year-old pupil named Eli found a one-centavo coin on his way home from school. Eli’s family was poor, that even the lowly centavo carried real weight and value, and rightly so, because – you could have a bowl of “arroz caldo” and “sarsaparilla”, now known as root beer, for five centavos each. One liter of gasoline cost fifteen centavos. Thrilled and excited, Eli rushed to his mother, a market vendor in the town’s public market to report his find. Instead of a pat on the back, he was stunned by his mother’s admonition with such stern words in the presence of his younger siblings – “Anak, hindi sa iyo ang pera na iyan. Kung sino man ang may-ari niyan ay malamang hindi makakatulog ngayong gabi sa kahahanap, kaya bukas na bukas din—pagpasok mo sa eskuwela, hanapin mong pilit ang may-ari at isauli mo ‘yan sa kanya.”

This short story shows that integrity, accountability and character could be taught at home and at an early age.

Yet, there is a missing piece in that story: power and authority.

The true test of a person’s character cannot conclusively be found in low and ordinary life, but in the possession of authority and power.

Unfortunately, the history of our republic forces this very cruel reality upon us: no single administration — past or present — has passed into the history books without a story of abuse of authority and power that scars us as a nation.

As faces in high corridors of power across the three branches of government appear and disappear, corruption endures and stays, albeit in different forms and styles — it mutates, adapts, and exploits our trust.

One decade earlier, there was a brazen abuse of pork barrel funds; then at another time, institutionalized patronage carried out in suitcases of cash.

I started to taste a position of power and authority as a one-star police general during the administration of former President Fidel V. Ramos. As I look back, to my junior years in the defunct Philippine Constabulary, also under then Chief PC M/Gen Fidel Ramos, I realize that some of my earliest tests of public accountability transpired not in the Senate plenary hall, but in the field of law enforcement.

I stood head-to-head with all sorts of outlaws in my various field assignments, taking on white-collar criminals, illegal gamblers, kidnappers, bank robbers, drug dealers, etc. Truth to tell, it didn’t come without temptations of bribe offers and similar tests of character, but through it all, I held on to a single principle: the law must be enforced firmly, without compromise, without fear or favor.

To my mind then and now, there can be no genuine accountability if honesty is demanded only from subordinates while those in authority excuse their own misconduct. There can be no justice if the law is enforced against the weak but negotiated with the powerful.

Looking back, this same tenacity and loyalty to law and duty led to the fallout between me and former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada. We can all remember what brought the collapse of the Estrada administration at the start of 2001: the allegations of payoffs from an illegal numbers game, popularly known then as the “Juetengate scandal”.

I recall it vividly, as if it were yesterday, when for the very first time, he brought up the idea of “allowing” jueteng with me some two weeks after he was proclaimed the 13th President of the Republic. His words – “Ping, hayaan lang nating mag-operate ang ‘jueteng’ bilang ganting utang na loob sa mga governors at mayors na tumulong sa kampanya ko”.  I remember warning him against his proposition with a firm but respectful retort – “Sir, presidente na po kayo. Kung tulong sa mga governors at mayors ang inaalala ninyo, marami po kayong pwedeng maitulong maliban sa ‘jueteng’ – illegal po iyan” – even referring to it as “larong lupa” and its dire consequences, thus – “sasabog tayo diyan, Sir”, as if I had foreseen – could be the doom of his Presidency.

I could have easily said yes to my then Commander-in-Chief and gain from it as its potential chief implementor, but I thought, real accountability teaches us that one cannot be simply answerable to the person above him. Rather, it is about being responsible to your oath and ultimately, to the people.

At all times, we must be careful not to allow the language of public administration to become a convenient vocabulary for avoiding responsibility. Sometimes, when we say – “I exercised my discretion”, what we really mean is – “I did what I wanted.” Sometimes, when we argue – “It was a collective decision”, we actually mean – “Nobody wants to take responsibility.” And many times, we justify by reasoning out – “I was only following orders”, because it is the oldest excuse in the book.

During the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, I found myself at the vanguard of the Senate opposition, exposing the deep-seated corruption in various shapes and forms. When the 2005 “Hello Garci” scandal exposed wiretapped conversations alleging state-sponsored vote rigging in the 2004 presidential elections, I was at the forefront of the Senate investigations to hold the administration accountable.

Which reminds me – when I was campaigning in 2004 against former President Arroyo and the late Fernando Poe Jr., and in Ilocos Norte, Gov. Bongbong then was rooting or campaigning for FPJ for obvious reasons – kinakapatid and all. But what I will never forget, si First Lady, Atty. Liza, was there on hand to host a dinner for me and my campaign team. When you are down and feeling low and somebody will come up to you to lift up your spirit and morale, you will never forget that person.

Shortly after, the bloated $329-million NBN-ZTE deal blew up in our faces. I delivered privilege speeches that uncovered massive overpricing and millions of dollars in kickbacks intended for first-family cronies and high-ranking officials. Of course, how can we easily forget the most expensive boulevard in the universe costing 2 million pesos per meter?

By repeatedly dismantling executive cover-ups— from electoral fraud to multi-billion-peso graft — I naturally earned the deep ire of the most powerful figures in the country, facing relentless political pressure and weaponized state machinery as a consequence.

I say, all’s well that ends well. In her 2022 memoir, Deus Ex Machina, former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo publicly admitted that the serious criminal accusations leveled against me during her presidency were based on false, unsubstantiated information and expressed regret that political reconciliation had collapsed.

The late Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus personally and publicly apologized to me for his indiscretions in believing a scammer named Angelo “Ador” Mawanay and other shoddy characters. Even a widely circulated broadsheet, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, came up with a front page story on May 27, 2019 “retracting false articles” linking this representation to alleged multi-million dollar hidden accounts in the United States and other illegal and criminal activities nearly 20 years prior to 2001, during my tenure as chief of the Philippine National Police.

I would be lying if I said it did not feel good because it did. But the lesson is not about vindication. Holding someone accountable is not necessarily an act of revenge. It is an act of respect—for the law, for public institutions, and most of all, for the people who have entrusted us with authority.

The presidency of Benigno Aquino III was not without a fair share of trials. It faced fiscal fallouts, centered on the massive Napoles “pork barrel” scam and the legal battle over the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

Having systematically rejected pork barrel allocations for years, I stood on firm moral ground to confront both issues. I called out the constitutional flaws of the DAP early on, warning against the executive branch usurping Congress’s power of the purse. When the PDAF scandal erupted, I was perhaps one of very few living souls among my peers in Congress who could sleep soundly at night.

Accountability must follow responsibility; responsibility must follow authority. If you have the authority to decide, you must have the courage to answer for that decision, no matter your political color.

The unprecedented pork barrel scam slapped us with the truth that power can corrupt, and absolutely – to the insatiably greedy, those who do not know when to stop – until their day of reckoning has come.

And even good people, when given unchecked power, can be tempted to believe that the rules should bend just a little—for them.

That is why our Constitution does not ask us simply to trust the character of those in power. It creates institutions designed to check power itself — through every crisis, shift in leadership, and changing tide.

In the midst of the greatest crisis of our time – when humanity was grappling with the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the administration of then President Rodrigo Roa Duterte faced allegations of systemic corruption.

As Vice Chair of the Blue Ribbon Committee, I actively participated in probing the multibillion-peso Pharmally scandal. We exposed a scheme that profited from overpriced anti-coronavirus vaccines and medical supplies at a time when Filipinos were fighting for their lives. This goes without saying – with or without a crisis, lockdown or not, public trust is never suspended, and neither should accountability. It is about making sure that power has consequences when it is abused. It means nothing unless those responsible are made accountable.

This quest for accountability is true to this day. Midway through his administration, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. hit us with a scathing “Mahiya naman kayo!” remark during his 2025 SONA. A few weeks later, as if on cue, I delivered two Senate privilege speeches detailing this systemic corruption over the flood control spending, ghost projects, and the culprits behind it. So when my colleagues entrusted me with the chairmanship of the Blue Ribbon Committee investigation to continue what I had started as a probe into this flood control scam, I offered no political promises — only a single, non-negotiable vow: go where the evidence takes us.

These Blue Ribbon hearings did not just expose wrongdoing—they laid the foundation for the cascade of cases now facing the corrupt inside and outside government.

If there is one thing that continues to ring true, especially in this whole flood control mess, it is this: accountability is the enemy of corrupt public officials, but a shield of honest public servants.

If your decisions are proper, let the records speak; If your actions are lawful, let the evidence establish it; if your conscience is clear, scrutiny should not frighten you. In fact, the honest public servant should be able to say: “Go ahead. Audit me.”

The person who fears accountability, however, may have a different reaction. He or she may say, “Why single me out?”

Someone would even cry, “This is political persecution and intimidation and pressure” – which, by the way, sounds very familiar.

After all these years, and all the battles that we have endured as a nation, I have come to realize that every day is a test of whether we are worthy of the trust that the Filipino people have placed in us.

We must remind ourselves every day that the power we wield was never ours to begin with. It is only borrowed, entrusted to us no less by the people we serve.

It demands that every public servant be prepared to explain, defend, and, when necessary, answer for every decision made and every action taken in the exercise of public authority.

Corruption and those behind it will definitely find their way to exploit our trust. But as public servants, we are called to stand on the same ground – the Constitution, and our commitment to upholding it.

In closing, while the many lawyers with different persuasions in this room can surely find as many different ways to interpret any legal fact, there is one principle that stands absolute – one truth we cannot compromise or negotiate. Above all legal debates, we must remain bound by the foundational principle we are sworn to uphold for our people and our nation, that is, “Public office is a public trust”.

By the way, the 10-year-old pupil in my short story somewhere in the beginning of my speech tonight is my older brother – my Kuya Eli, who recounted his unforgettable experience when he delivered his eulogy to our dearly beloved mother, my Nanay Ymang after a simple necrological mass to celebrate her journey to Heaven.

Thank you and God bless us all!!

*****