IT CAN not be discounted that this passing week has been frenetic - even frantic for most.
The congressional hearing on reported irregularities - no less validated by the NBI - has been revealing at the very least.
Billions of pesos coming in and out of bank accounts staggered us to disbelief.
This is not mere millions, something that would have floored us right away.
These are billions of pesos, about P6.7 billion to be precise, that went in and out through seemingly indiscriminate transactions that were snuffed out.
And do take note that these were meticulously gone over through authenticated and validated efforts by the investigators, no less headed by the NBI and the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
We who diligently watched and heard couldn’t help but gasp for breath. Some others nearly fell of their seats in incredible disbelief.
How could a high public official have banking transactions like what had been reported?
How explain the huge disparity in legitimate income that we’re gapingly yanked out of well-preserved documents?
It distresses us no end that a public official has an eerie way of conducting himself/herself this brazenly shameless way.
Is this how money - more so if publicly earned- ought to be transacted, as if everything is loose change?
Is this the proper norm that public officials should comport themselves befitting the electoral mandate we entrusted?
To use a street language remark, nabudol ba tayo ng hayagan at walang pakundangan?
And note that while all this was going on, there was a forlorn seat reserved for her should she materialise out of the blue yonder.
That seat, unoccupied, merely sharpened the level of nothingness that Congress has become to the invited “resource speaker”.
This kind of attitude deserves no less than a public reaction more stinging than a seat forlorn in its utter emptiness.
In the end, it is not just about manners . It is about conduct, even more so because the absentee holds public office and therefore deserving public trust.
This is not about an accounting matter that deserves to be counted upon. It’s about accountability, perhaps alien to the absentee, but deeply essential in keeping the norms of public conduct held in public esteem and respectability.
This isn’t just about numbers hollering from the documents revealed. It’s all about discipline that we deserved from every government official entrusted to serve and to lead in utmost surrender to public trust.
Nothing less is expected.
