Three beyond reproach

The muck-throwing between President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte, on the one hand, and Senators Dick Gordon and Frank Drilon, on the other, is not helping the country any, as we are all trying to recover from the effects of COVID-19.

They look like little boys hurling mud at each other, but both parties aren’t scoring any bullseyes. They’re impervious to dirt, because both are beyond reproach when it comes to corruption.

I don’t know about the people around him, but I can say without batting an eyelash that Digong is not corrupt. I’ve known him for many years.

Ask billionaire Lucio Co, the owner of the Puregold chain of supermarkets.

Ask Girme Gutierrez, president and chief executive officer of the Trust Trade chain of gun stores.

Ask the Lopez family’s Sky Cable Corporation, which was given permission to set up a cable network in Davao City when he was its mayor.

Co told me Digong approved straightaway Puregold’s application to do business in the city.

Mr. Duterte, the supermarket tycoon said, turned down his offer to give thank-you money. In most cities or towns, that money would have been accepted as it was given freely.

Gutierrez said the same thing; then Mayor Duterte approved his application to set up a gun store in Davao City with no conditions.

Mayor Digong told him that if he insisted on giving the “gratitude” money, he might as well buy food and relief goods for the victims of Super Typhoon Pablo, which devastated Davao Oriental and Davao de Oro in December 2012.

The grateful Sky Cable Corporation was so appreciative it asked Duterte what it could do for him. The reply: Nothing. In fact, the mayor thanked the company for setting up its cable network in the city.

That, perhaps, was the reason Mr. Duterte had hard feelings with the Lopez family, who own the now-shuttered ABS-CBN Corporation, for not giving him equal airtime as his rivals during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Duterte lives a Spartan life; the small living room in his Davao City home is filled with memorabilia and knickknacks from his decades as city mayor.

I went to his home, among the few people allowed to visit, and found the place cramped.

Asked why he lived in poor-man’s quarters, Digong said he had no use for wealth.

“What matters is as long as my dick stands to the occasion,” Duterte said in jest.

But even if Digong is immaculate in governance, it was unfair and irresponsible of him to charge Dick Gordon and Frank Drilon of being corrupt.

I know both senators as I’ve had personal and professional dealings with them over the years; they, too, are not corrupt.

I’ve known Drilon as secretary of justice and secretary of labor; he has not been charged with corruption.

The same thing with Gordon; he could have enriched himself as mayor of Olongapo, once considered a “sin city,” but he didn’t.

When Gordon was the head honcho of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (after the Americans left the once-biggest US Navy base outside the Continental US), I didn’t hear anything about him abusing his power.

Yes, Dick, a strict disciplinarian, has a mercurial temperament; but that’s because he’s impatient with inefficient subordinates and people who lie to him.

Those who worked under Dick at the SBMA, the volunteers and paid employees, sing praises about his honesty and how he gets things done his way.

Even at the Philippine Red Cross, where he’s chairman, his volunteer workers and subordinates would go with him through hell and high water while doing their humanitarian work.

Both Drilon and Gordon are hard workers and brook no incompetence among their staff.

On that score, Duterte, Drilon and Gordon are on the same boat; and they used to be good friends.

Gordon, however, shot back at the President, quoting him in one of his speeches: “I hate corruption. I don’t claim to be clean. I also stole money before, but it’s gone now.”

But knowing Digong, that statement was said in jest. Sometimes the President is misunderstood by people who take him seriously.

His spinmeisters have a hard time explaining to reporters that the President was just joking.

Although I know where Digong is coming from – he is fiercely loyal to his friends and subordinates – he should bear in mind that the country’s interests must have precedence over personal relations.

President Manuel L. Quezon’s words loudly ring with resonance at this time: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.”

Yes, Digong is spotlessly clean when it comes to graft and corruption, but can he say that of those people under him, and his friends like former economic adviser Michael Yang?

The President is not always there to watch their every move. Even the sharp eyes of a flying eagle have limited vision of the entire landscape.

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The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) – one loses breath after reciting this grandiloquent title – has proposed the scrapping of the wearing of face shields in public.

It should have done that a long time ago.

Face shields not only look ridiculous (a person wearing it looks like an astronaut), they’re also unhealthy to the wearer as bacteria and viruses can gather in the plastic material’s surface.

We’re the only country in the world that requires its people to use face shields.

Whoever came up with the idea had oodles and oodles of dirty money in mind.