This was true — the global spectacle “of birds of the same feather flocking together” was an obstacle to the ability of President Duterte to accomplish his promises to the people.
The public statement by then CoA chairperson Michael Aguinaldo that CoA had no authority to audit the Philippine Red Cross because CoA had no jurisdiction over it did not sit well with retired and senior state auditors.
The PRC official’s statement that the “humanitarian organization” was not under its audit jurisdiction went against the Constitution.
If Mr. Aguinaldo made the statement the basis for his rebuff of the presidential order to audit the PRC, that in itself was devastating to his stature as a topnotch lawyer and chief of the constitutional audit commission.
Unwittingly, Chairperson Aguinaldo may have committed a culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust for refusing to do what he was constitutionally mandated to do.
Senior state auditors found it intriguing that Mr. Aguinaldo refused to exercise his constitutional function but found a lot of time to implement the citizen’s participatory audit or CPA, whose procedures were tabooed by both the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions and the UN Board of Audit.
The CPA is an audit system. It has become a silly idea after former CoA Commissioner Heidi Mendoza injected into it populist demagogueries, a political imagination characterized by false claims and promises allegedly supportive of the cause of the ordinary people. In simple terms, it is a deception. And Heidi, according to many people, was a master at that. All of this was prohibited by the two world bodies.
For CoA to refuse to do its constitutional duty and instead engage in an unlawful exercise of the citizen participatory audit was playing with fire.
During the interpellation by Senator Risa Hontiveros during the Commission on Appointments hearing on the interim appointment of new CoA Chairperson Gamaliel Cordoba on 29 November 2022, the latter promised to resolve the issue of the 4,000-case backlog in the agency within two years and, better still, he also promised to report to the CA the progress of his efforts to resolve the problems at CoA.
But according to an internal CoA report, the number of backlogged cases is increasing rather than decreasing. As of today, the number has gone up to 4,800, instead of going down to 3,200.
It appears that there has been no progress in Mr. Cordoba’s promise to resolve the backlog.
With all due respect, this column recommends that the Commission Proper headed by Chairperson Cordoba take the historic and unprecedented step of nullifying the audit of the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the CoA Special Audit Report 2012-3 released on 16 August 2013 for being unconstitutional, to clear the lawmakers and save them from indictment and public shaming without legal basis.
The audit and report thereon were without the approval of the CoA as a collegial body.
The strongest, most visible, solid, and incontrovertible evidence that the PDAF audit and the report thereon were irregular and illegal was the clear and indisputable statement of former CoA Commissioner Mendoza, the undisputed partner of then CoA Chairperson Grace Pulido Tan, that “I have nothing to do with the audit of the PDAF and the special CoA PDAF audit report.” This statement was duly notarized and officially certified by the Senate secretariat.
This case reminds us of Aesop’s fable about the frog and the scorpion.
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river.
Midway, the scorpion stings the frog and, feeling the deadly sting and gasping for breath, the frog asks the scorpion why. The scorpion replies, “it’s my nature.”