Love and impeachment

With the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, the phrase “betrayal of public trust” has been mentioned so many times. I’ve come across articles trying to explain “betrayal of public trust” by citing the Constitution. At the rate I’ve heard non-lawyers complain about how difficult it is to follow the impeachment proceedings because of the legal jargon, it appears that there is still space for columnists like me to try to explain some more.

What is betrayal of public trust? With Valentine’s Day and the latest in the Vicki Belo and Hayden Kho romantic melodrama, it is easy to imagine the meaning ofbetrayal: to be unfaithful in guarding or maintaining a promise, to be disloyal, to dash someone’s hopes or expectations. But what is public trust? A Google search of “trust” leads me to different articles about how essential trust is for relationships to work. While I initially thought that they may not seem directly applicable to the Chief Justice and his conduct, I realized that being in public office is really like being in a committed romantic relationship: there are promises that may be difficult to keep and painful consequences if the beloved’s hopes or expectations are dashed.

In law school, the subject of Trusts was included in Obligations and Contracts. Very little is said about Trusts in the Civil Code and it is not even directly defined. Article 1440 of the Civil Code states: “A person who establishes a trust is called the trustor; one in whom confidence is reposed as regards property for the benefit of another person is known as the trustee; and the person for whose benefit the trust has been created is referred to as the beneficiary.” The keywords are “confidence is reposed,”“benefit of another person,” and “property.”

Examples of trusts and the duties of a trustee can be found in the Rules of Court governing Special Proceedings. For example, administrators and executors of estates and guardians of minors or incapacitated persons are required to make an inventory of the properties of the decedent or the ward.The point is to make it clear what the properties they are holding for the benefit of the estate or the ward are. This helps ensure that these properties are not comingled or mixed with the administrator’s or guardian’s own properties.

If public office is a romantic relationship, it is one where the government employee is presumed to be prone to cheat. Hence, the law tries to put safeguards to keep him or her from straying, like requiring the filing of a Statement of Assets and Liabilities (SALN) annually. By making an inventory and listing down what a government employee owns and owes, we, the public, are supposed to be assured that the government employee will remain loyal. We will know what properties he has (and that he is not taking what is rightfully ours) and that he is spending only what we are giving him (barring lucky lotto wins or gifts from generous relatives or huge debts; all assets obtained in any way have to be declared, too).

We, the public, through our Congressmen at the House of Representatives, are accusing the Chief Justice of cheating on us. We want to know why he has real properties and money in bank accounts that he did not tell us about. His spokesperson has claimed that he had savings before accepting public office. He did not declare these in his SALN, as he should have. Do we still trust him? The Senators, whom we elected to speak for us and to whom we have granted the power to decide matters like this on our behalf, will hear our accusations and look at our proof.If the abstract “public” is the whole body, the Senate could be our higher self, our mind and conscience. The Senate will tell us if our accusations are mere figments of our imagination, as the Chief Justice’s lawyers suggest.

With the muddling of issues brought about by accusations that the senators have been bribed, I have no idea how this relationship of trust will end.I think I’ll skip the TV coverage of the impeachment trial and just enjoy Valentine’s Day.

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