Caesar’s wife test
The measure was not simply about proving guilt. It was about the impossibility of governing under a cloud of suspicion, and the obligation of those in power to dissipate that cloud themselves.
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The measure was not simply about proving guilt. It was about the impossibility of governing under a cloud of suspicion, and the obligation of those in power to dissipate that cloud themselves.
An old Roman maxim that outlived the empire held that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion.
The adage is linked to Roman dictator Julius Caesar’s second wife, Pompeia and a scandal in 62 BCE (before common era), when she hosted the rites of Bona Dea, a women-only religious festival, at Caesar’s home.
Publius Clodius Pulcher, a political operator, reportedly sneaked into the gathering disguised as a woman, allegedly to pursue an affair with Pompeia. The incident led Caesar to divorce her.
Asked to explain his unforgiving decision, Caesar said that it was not enough for his wife to be not guilty of adultery — given whom she was married to, she could not even be suspected of it.
The measure was not simply about proving guilt. It was about the impossibility of governing under a cloud of suspicion, and the obligation of those in power to dissipate that cloud themselves.
That standard is precisely what is missing in Malacañang’s handling of the flood control scandal.
A fugitive former Congressman, Zaldy Co, has, on video, accused President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his cousin, former Speaker Martin Romualdez, of splitting as much as P56 billion in kickbacks from anomalous flood control projects.
Eighteen men identifying themselves as Co’s former security detail put their names to an affidavit alleging their delivery of suitcases of cash to the President, to Romualdez, and to others under the latter’s direction.
Four of them later recanted, under murky circumstances. A fifth withdrew his sworn testimony.
Then the Ombudsman, after seven months of review, filed a plunder case against Romualdez and Co, yet the charges appeared to miss a key piece of the puzzle based on the former bodyguards’ affidavit.
The Caesar’s wife principle does not ask whether the allegation is true. It asks whether the appearance of impropriety has been dispelled, and by that measure, the administration has failed the standard.
This matter goes beyond Co’s credibility — which is genuinely low — because he faces his own plunder charge, giving him every incentive to spread the blame as widely as possible.
But a bad motive of an accuser does not make an allegation false, and it certainly does not excuse the one accused from answering it.
Romualdez is not just any political operator, but he is the President’s cousin, elevated to the speakership with the President’s backing, where he presided over an appropriations process through which the President’s budget request had to pass.
When a whistleblower says money moved from that process into the pockets of both men, a full explanation and disclosure are required.
The same standard should extend past the President himself. The bodyguards — dubbed the “maleta boys” after the suitcases the money was carried in — named other officials as recipients of the cash they delivered allegedly on Romualdez’s instruction. Those names have circulated in hearings and news reports.
Coming clean requires Malacañang to give a public accounting of what the Ombudsman examined regarding the President’s alleged role, and why it was found insufficient.
A summary of the investigative findings, the same type of disclosure the public was given for Romualdez and Co, must be made public.
It requires the administration to stop dismissing every Co video and start tracing the financial trail, the shell companies, the bank records, the property transfers that surfaced in the Romualdez case and show that it does not lead to the President’s door.
Accusations made on video while abroad are not proof — but against the most powerful man in the country, there must be transparency to dispel the smallest iota of doubt.
Caesar’s wife was not asked to prove her fidelity. She was expected to live in a manner that made any allegation against her highly unthinkable.
The President has not yet shown the absurdity of asking him questions about Floodgate.
