By Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David
The principle of command responsibility emerged from military law. It means that those in authority are answerable not only for their own actions but also for the wrongdoing of their subordinates when they fail to prevent or correct it. Authority and accountability must always travel together.
In essence, command responsibility says that leaders cannot plead ignorance when abuses occur under their watch. It is not enough to say, “I did not know,” or “I did not give the order.” The higher one’s office, the greater one’s duty to ensure integrity, discipline and justice among those who act in one’s name. Power, after all, is not a shield against blame but a summons to vigilance.
This principle applies beyond the military. It extends to anyone entrusted with responsibility — whether in government, Church, or civil society. When leaders benefit from loyalty and obedience, they also share in the burden of moral and institutional failure. The privilege to lead carries the duty to answer.
Our nation now confronts a test of leadership that calls precisely for this kind of accountability. The ongoing revelations about massive corruption in flood-control projects expose not just isolated misconduct but systemic rot. The return of the outlawed pork barrel, under new disguises — insertions, augmentations, allocations, or unprogrammed appropriations — reveals how deeply entrenched the culture of entitlement has become.
The corruption chain runs through every stage of the budget process: from the National Expenditure Program to the General Appropriations Bill, the final law, and even to bicameral and “small committee” adjustments. At every level, signatures were affixed, funds re-channeled, and projects padded or fabricated. These were not accidents; they were choices made by people in authority.
In such circumstances, moral leadership demands more than denial or deflection. The most honorable course for those at the helm — both in the executive and legislative branches — is to assume command responsibility. That does not mean confessing to personal guilt for every infraction, but acknowledging that these abuses happened under their command, and that they bear the duty to ensure truth, justice, and reform.
When corruption corrodes public trust, what restores it is not rhetoric but humility. It would be a powerful gesture for those in the highest offices to say, “The system failed under our watch. We will not protect anyone. We will let the investigation proceed freely, and we will prosecute the guilty, whether friend or ally.” Such honesty disarms cynicism and rekindles faith in leadership.
True responsibility is not merely reactive — it is reformative. Leaders who truly take command responsibility will not only allow an independent and unobstructed inquiry; they will also address the structures that enable corruption to recur: discretionary funds without oversight, opaque budget negotiations, and partisan projects disguised as public service. They will empower citizens, local communities, and institutions like the Commission on Audit, the Ombudsman, and the Independent Commission of Inquiry to do their work without fear or favor.
Command responsibility should never be reduced to a political slogan. It is, at its heart, a moral principle. It reminds every person in authority — whether priest, public official, or civil servant — that leadership is a vocation of service, not privilege. The failure of subordinates reflects, to some degree, the failure of supervision, formation, or example from above.
We should therefore not see command responsibility as punishment but as an invitation — to humility, to repentance, to reform. When leaders admit that something went wrong under their care, they recover a measure of moral authority that no position or title can guarantee. Accountability, when sincerely embraced, is not weakness; it is the highest form of leadership.
If the country is to recover from this moral and fiscal crisis, its leaders must choose the harder path: to tell the truth, to clean their own ranks, and to rebuild trust through transparency and justice. Only then can they claim the moral right to command — and only then will the people believe again that authority can still serve the common good.