Does grafter's death exculpate heirs?

Can a barangay council legally ordain residents to present a doc’s prescription before buying a condom? I mean, can it invoke medical or religious beliefs to invent narrow rules?

If the barangay council of Ayala Alabang in Muntinlupa is left to impose a no-Rx-no-condom ordinance, what would follow? Can any other barangay force women to wear head-to-feet burqas, or men to genuflect before religious images, no matter what their faith? Can any other council require, strictly for medical reasons, that residents buy only drugs made by European Roche, GlaxoSmithKline or Novartis, but never by American Johnson & Johnson or Pfizer?

Just asking ... because I’d like my barangay to impose a genius’ IQ of 140 before allowing anyone to reside.

* * *

A public official, though claiming to never have taken bribes, still can be removed for habitual inaction.

The Constitution states in Article XI, Accountability of Public Officers, Section 1: “Public office is a public trust. Public officers and employees must at all times be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives.”

Work laxity, say, to investigate or prosecute, breaks the rule of responsibility (to duty), honesty, loyalty (to the people), and competence. If a constitutional officer commits consistent negligence, s/he may be impeached for culpable violation of the Constitution. Too, for betrayal of public trust in tarnishing the office.

Article XI, Section 13-1, as well as the Ombudsman Act (R.A. 6770), also require the Ombudsman to: “Investigate on its own, or on complaint by any person, any act or omission of any public official, employee, office or agency, when such act or omission appears to be illegal, unjust, improper, or inefficient.”

Even the Ombudsman may be probed under this all-encompassing provision.

Further, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (R.A. 3019) penalizes officials who are remiss in duties. Section 3-f defines one of the forms of sleaze as: “Neglecting or refusing, after due demand or request, without sufficient justification, to act within a reasonable time on any matter pending before him for the purpose of obtaining, directly or indirectly, from any person interested in the matter some pecuniary or material benefit or advantage, or for the purpose of favoring his own interest or giving undue advantage in favor of or discriminating against any other interested party.”

* * *

Hot legal topics these days too are grafters’ relatives. People are asking: is the family that benefits from illicit wealth exculpated by the death of the grafter? Is a spouse who launders a grafter’s loot exempted from investigation because suffering high-blood pressure? Can an in-law dummying for a grafter flout Philippine law because a foreign citizen?

Again the Constitution provides the answer. Article XI, Section 15, says: “The right of the State to recover properties unlawfully acquired by public officials and employees, from them or from their nominees or transferees, shall not be barred by prescription, laches or estoppel.”

The recovery effort is not bound by time. It does not lapse because of coddling by negligent lawmen; future investigators and prosecutors may finish the job. The kin being sickly or a foreign citizen cannot stop Philippine authorities from retrieving stolen State assets.

The Forfeiture Law (R.A. 1379) deems confiscable “(1) Property unlawfully acquired by the respondent, but its ownership is concealed by its being recorded in the name of, or held by, the respondent’s spouse, ascendants, descendants, relatives or any other person.”

The law adds: “Protection Against Self-Incrimination - Neither the respondent or any other person shall be excused from attending and testifying or from producing books, papers, correspondence, memoranda and other records on the ground that the testimony or evidence, documentary or otherwise, required of him may tend to incriminate him or subject him to prosecution; but no individual shall be prosecuted criminally for or on account of any transaction, matter or thing concerning which he is compelled, after having claimed his privilege against self-incrimination, to testify or produce evidence, documentary or otherwise, except that such individual so testifying shall not be exempt from any prosecution or conviction for perjury or false testimony committed in so testifying or from administrative proceedings.”

* * *

Political circles are abuzz with talk that Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez already has done her arithmetic. That’s why she expects to be impeached forthwith by the House of Reps, but cleared by the Senate.

It will take one-third, or 90 of the 269-member House, to impeach Gutierrez. It will also take a third, only eight of the 23-member Senate, to acquit her. Supposedly she has counted noses, and knows which senators will defend her. One is already doing so this early.

* * *

I will not say I told you so (in a recent column). I will only remind President Noynoy Aquino’s advisers that the recent gathering of Chinese oceanographers in Shanghai was a foreboding of things to come. Like, last week’s threatening acts by two Chinese naval vessels’ against a Philippine exploration ship in the Reed Bank, off the Spratlys.

The January 26-27 “South China Sea-Deep” purported to be purely for science. Chinese academics, even those working abroad, were called to the homeland allegedly to plan a survey of the international sea-lane. But then, Beijing claims the entire 3.5-million square-kilometers of South China Sea to be part of its territory. Any survey will benefit its military, much like the British Admiralty’s charting of the world’s coastlines and shallow seas in the 1700s-1800s.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]