One of the reasons that the country has struggled to progress was the presence of individuals looking to build their wealth through public office, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla said.

“If they want to get rich, the government should not be where they look for a job, they should just build businesses outside of government,” the Ombudsman expressed during a press conference on Friday, 17 July.

Remulla called on citizens of the country to become more involved when it came to questioning public officials that had a clear “conflict of interest” when it came to the position they assumed.

The official, who was also a former congressman at the House of Representatives, emphasized that there continues to be a prevailing issue wherein contractors were entering congress to influence and manipulate laws in their favor.

He said that such developments clearly undermined laws mainly built to combat conflict of interest, particularly contained in Section 3(h) under Republic Act No. 3019.

Under the said law, any public officer is prohibited from having “direct or indirect financial interests” in any transactions, business, or contracts that they intervene in the conduct of their official duties at their post.

Even with the laws in place, officials have decided to ignore such provisions as they were left unnoticed for an extended period of time.

“For the longest time, people took it for granted. They do it because they can, that can no longer be the case. Some legislators look at it as an entitlement now, during our time this was not the case,” he said.

“There are rules that the government has set on the spending of public funds, when spending public funds there should be regulations that must be followed,” he added.

Officials under preliminary investigation

As part of their continued probe into the multibillion peso anomalous flood control scandal, Remulla said that some of their cases against numerous officials were lifted to the preliminary investigation stage.

Members of congress that the Ombudsman specifically named were Tarlac 2nd District Rep. Cristy Angeles, Uswag Ilonggo Partylist Rep. Jojo Ang, and Construction Workers Solidarity Partylist Rep. Edwin Gardiola that have cases that were about to pass the fact-finding stage of the probe.

Meanwhile, Remulla also said that their case against former House speaker Martin Romualdez was also set for the preliminary investigation as they were slowly gathering all pieces of evidence related to the issue.

The official was also asked about the overwhelming public sentiment regarding the investigations into flood control, particularly the seemingly slow moving progress when it came to the actual filing of criminal charges.

To that, Remulla said that he was not necessarily looking to rush filing cases, stressing that he wanted to ensure that no stone was left unturned in case build-up and that cases were submitted properly and not weaponized.

“The principle that we want to rule here is that when we ask for a continuous trial, and it is granted, that all the evidence is already there. No evidence or testimony will be lost…preparation is the most difficult, preparation needs to be complete,” he expressed.