Ombudsman dilemma

It is truly regrettable that President Duterte had to threaten to investigate the Office of the Ombudsman, especially since it is apparent that he is doing it out of pique. The president is angry that the Ombudsman is investigating his family's alleged hidden wealth, and even angrier that it all seems to be instigated by his sworn enemy at the moment, Antonio Trillanes.

I find the threat of Duterte against the Ombudsman regrettable because it sends the wrong message -that he is above the law, that he cannot be investigated by the Ombudsman or anyone at all. Any leader, but especially the leader of a country, must lead by example. He cannot rule with two sets of rules, one for himself and another for the rest.

But that is only where I am willing to let my regret take me. Other than sending the wrong message, I just do not think that the Office of the Ombudsman itself should be either beyond the ambit of the law or above any suspicion. Just as we love to ask who will police the police, it is also both fair and necessary to ask who will "ombudsman" the Ombudsman?

All things being equal, and the world being imperfect as it is, there is no absolute guarantee that the crookedness one finds often in government cannot be found also in the Ombudsman. That it is a constitutional body or that its main mandate is to investigate shenanigans in government does not by itself insulate the office and its functionaries from the clutches of the very evil it seeks to go after.

That the Office of the Ombudsman has never been investigated does not mean to say it should never be. To insist it must never be investigated is to play with fire, the kind with the capability to engulf everyone. Not allowing the investigation of the Ombudsman can make it too powerful and beyond reproach. In the wrong hands or under the wrong leadership, it can become a destructive force we will all regret having unleashed upon our own selves.

The Ombudsman must be held accountable too. And it must not be fired by the arrogance of invincibility. Too much independence can imbue god-like qualities that may be too much for mere mortals. And it needs to prove itself to be beyond the political interests of anybody, which admittedly must be tough considering it requires political power to make it into the Ombudsman.

This is the dilemma facing weak democracies like the Philippines, where there is a need to rein in a powerful body such as the Ombudsman lest it becomes too powerful, and yet at the same time not rein it in too much lest it gets undermined and useless. And frankly I do not know to what direction swung the threat of Duterte -whether to the point where it is put in its proper place, or the other way where it gets crippled.

If there is something positive that may have come out of the Duterte threat against the Ombudsman, it is that it has triggered a debate on what exactly might be done to ensure this constitutional body strikes a perfect balance in the way it carries out its mandate. Finally we have seen the Ombudsman in a new light, that it is a potential problem down the road and therefore must be fine-tuned before something like a real constitutional crisis erupts.

‘Just as we love to ask who will police the police, it is also both fair and necessary to ask who will "ombudsman"

the Ombudsman?’