Is delicadeza a thing of the Filipino past?
According to an online blurb, the term “delicadeza” is a “Filipino word that means having good manners, respect, and a sense of what is right and wrong.” It means being honest, humble, and thinking about others before yourself. In the Philippines, delicadeza is a very important value, especially for leaders.
The concept of delicadeza is now being touted as something our present leaders no longer practice, prompting one political analyst to say that it has become a thing of the past.
Expecting what one gets in exchange for currying a highly placed government official’s favor is now part of the whole range of wheeling and dealing among politicians whose concern is mainly for self-promotion or for the protection of their family’s political turf and interests. These include huge sums of money, enough to leverage more political clout for a political clan in the next elections. This money comes from shaving off substantial funds from important government infrastructure projects, in what we now know as “kickbacks” or “SOPs” (a flawed translation of standard operating procedures).
More importantly, it also includes being awarded huge government infrastructure contracts, even with a questionable construction ranking that does not comply with government procurement requirements.
We can ask former Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero whether he has delicadeza at all. From the time he started “tinkering” with the 2025 budget by ensuring some anomalous insertions in it toward the end of 2024 to his recent disclosure of his statement of assets, liabilities, and net worth, Escudero has become both an object of ridicule and a subject of several innuendoes on social media. He has become the poster boy for SALNs that are highly dubious, claiming a net worth of only P18 million, making him the “poorest” among the top lawmakers of the country.
Escudero and his wife are famous for their flagrant display of opulence on social media, where the latter displays the senator’s magnanimous gifts of highly valuable and rare jewelry pieces. One of these is the controversial Paraiba tourmaline ring reportedly purchased for Heart Evangelista’s 39th birthday last year. After Evangelista flaunted it on her social media page, some netizens gasped in disbelief that it was not only huge in terms of the size of the precious Brazilian tourmaline gemstone, but more because of its whopping value of around $1 million (at present exchange rates, it could be at least P58-P59 million!)
And yet, the senator’s 2025 SALN declares a net worth of only P18 million. As some netizens remarked—”the math is not mathing…!”
As a celebrity and fashion icon, Evangelista also lacks delicadeza. She is not an accountable government official, but she happens to be the beneficiary of a donor who is an accountable, elected government official. In our laws, when a donor gives something of this huge amount, he or she is supposed to declare it, and with it, pay the corresponding taxes levied on imported, valuable commodities.
It also begs the question of where Escudero got the money to buy this extraordinary piece of jewelry, which could only be bought by people who have a net worth of more than P18 million.
But in his seemingly fiery histrionics to extricate himself from all these dirty entanglements, Escudero has instead buried himself deeper in ignominy. He has nowhere to go after he has been ousted as Senate President—except to side with the group of sycophants who continue to rally behind former President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte. Escudero managed to evade the inevitable impeachment trial of the VP through his questionable interpretation of the word “forthwith” as provided in the Constitution.
Such a group is composed of people who have been known to have no delicadeza at all. They are former congressmen, congresswomen, and senators who continue to refuse to do right for the sake of the Filipino people, insist on bending the laws, and declare vociferously, using typical chest-thumping oratory, that they have never done anything wrong despite having been indicted in various plunder cases. One of them is former congressman and now Sen. Joel Villanueva, who was ordered dismissed by former Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales in 2016, after having misused pork barrel funds assigned to his congressional seat.
But in late 2016, after Duterte assumed the presidency, he appointed Samuel Martires as the new Ombudsman. Martires quickly reversed the dismissal of the former Ombudsman, clearing Villanueva of the plunder charges.
Both appointing officer and appointee did not show any delicadeza at all; they reversed a public and legal order in secret, contrary to legally approved guidelines.
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