MANIFESTATION ON ETHICS COMMITTEE

COMPLAINT AND RESOLUTION

SENATOR M. A. MADRIGAL
8 October 2008

Mr. President:

Permit me to make a manifestation before this chamber,

referring my complaint against the Senate President, and
asking the Committee on Ethics to investigate the complaint
I hereby submit for their consideration and urgent action.

We have long been criticized by the public for making

charges, while failing to substantiate those charges. The
complaint I am referring to the Ethics Committee is not in
the nature of wide-sweeping yet essentially unproveable set
of allegations.

These are findings based on fact, based on actual

documents, and on real and binding provisions of our
Constitution and our laws.

They are, furthermore, first and foremost the obligation,

morally, legally, and politically, of this chamber to receive,
study, deliberate and act upon. For they involve the behavior
of our chamber’s presiding officer.

This is the proper forum, the deserving forum, for the

cataloging and consideration, of the wrongdoings of one of
our peers. It is incumbent on us, collectively, that is,
institutionally, to confront what my complaint contains.
In the broadest strokes, this complaint submits that the
Senate President has made a career of perverting the public
good and public funds, for private pecuniary gain, with utter
contempt for the laws and ethical conduct required of public
officials, in particular, elected officials.

The determination of the Senate President’s obvious and

damning conflict of interest, in proposing and benefitting
from, public programs and public works to his own personal
financial gain, will be easy. The relevant Constitutional
provisions and laws have been enumerated in my complaint.
The specific instances and circumstances by which the
Senate President violated the laws are listed down.

The opportunities the Senate President took, directly, that is,

personally, by his own intervention in the bureaucracy and
his participation in the bending of relevant laws and
regulations, are amply listed in my complaint. They are
supported by documentation, and they serve to underscore
that the Senate President cannot, by any sober measure,
plead extenuating or mitigating circumstances to reduce
either his culpability or his guilt.

His companies profited; he profited; he intervened in the

bureaucracy and helped pass laws to ensure his private gain
when we have a great number of laws meant to prevent
exactly what has transpired.

As legislators we are tasked with oversight over the

executive and deliberating on legislation. We are not here to
be fixers, pimping out legislation in order to line our own or
anyone else’s pockets.
We are here to be public servants; to work for the public
good even if it comes at our own personal expense. We are
certainly not here to craft laws while trying to find crafty
ways to ignore the very same laws we are sworn not only to
uphold, but improve if need be.

Mr. President, let me repeat, for the record and for the
consideration of my colleagues, that what I am submitting to
the Ethics Committee is not an unsubstantiated collection of
allegations, but fully-documented and thoroughly-researched
charges.

Charges that, if soberly scrutinized, will certainly compel

action on the part of this chamber’s Ethics Committee.

I hope that the Senate President, who has, so far, met this
whole issue with the most obstinate silence, will finally take
this opportunity to conscientiously and thoroughly dispute
the charges.

It is for the Ethics Committee to approach my complaint with

an open mind, for indeed, all must be assumed innocent
until proven guilty. I know that the evidence is overwhelming
so that guilt will be the ultimate finding of any Ethics
Committee that takes its obligations seriously. Nonetheless,
the Senate President should be accorded every opportunity
to vindicate himself.

Continued silence will do neither himself nor the Senate any

good. A thorough threshing of the facts may ultimately prove
politically costly to him but institutionally, legally, and dare I
say, morally valuable to this Senate and the country.
Ilea iacta est. The die is cast; the ethical Rubicon has
been crossed; presented with a legal, financial, and ethical
Gordian Knot of his own creation, the Senate Presdent’s
vindication or ultimate condemnation requires that knot
being sliced through, with the razor-sharp sword of impartial
justice and the intellectual rigor and objectivity that are the
finest traditions of this chamber.