Is there really such a distinction?
“Do not solicit or accept gifts, especially if it is in the form of cash, during the holiday season. Commission on Election chairman Sixto Brillantes issued the reminder, saying erring employees might be dismissed from the service,” reports Tina Santos in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Brillantes, himself a lawyer, explained that a public official accepting cash from a person who has a pending case at the Comelec may be construed as indirect bribery. Food, however, is an exception to the rule “because we can share it with others.”
