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CIVIL-society groups on Monday launched a parallel
Philippine Development Forum (PDF) and issued a
resounding call to both government and foreign donors
for transparency and accountability in the
identification of loan-assisted development programs and
projects for the Philippines, amid reported rampant
graft and corruption involving official development
assistance (ODA) funds.
The
People’s Forum was launched a day ahead of the two-day
government-sponsored PDF to be held in Clark Field,
Pampanga, on March 26 and 27, among government and ODA-donor
agencies.
The
undertaking paved the way for the launching of the
report entitled “Time to Dismantle the Roots of Evil,” a
citizen’s report on ODA to the Philippines by ODA Watch,
a nongovernment organization (NGO) advocating
transparency and accountability among NGOs involved in
programs and projects involving ODA.
Civil-society leader Leonor Briones, coconvener of
Social Watch-Philippines, sounded the urgent call for
reform in the foreign-aid system in the Philippines and
urged civil-society groups to be more active in
monitoring foreign-assisted development programs and
projects.
She said
the people, represented by members of the civil society,
including NGOs and people’s organizations (POs), must
have a say on what programs or projects the people need
and want to be implemented.
In an
interview with the BusinessMirror, Briones said NGOs
want the government-led PDF to address squarely and
candidly the issues and questions that such scandals of
corruption and misuse of ODA funds have raised in the
public mind.
Among
the issues the civil-society groups want to be cleared
are efficiency and transparency of the government
procurement and public financial-management systems;
compliance with and short-circuiting by the Executive
department’s rules and systems; abdication by the
National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) of
its role in carefully analyzing, evaluating and
overseeing ODA-funded projects; effective oversight of
ODA transactions and program implementation; and
measures to effectively prevent and prosecute
graft-and-corruption cases.
Briones
hit the political corruption that prevails in the
government.
“Corruption is not perpetrated by the rank-and-file
employees, not by those elected by the people, but
people who compose shadow government. This kind of
corruption that persists in government must be stopped,”
Briones said.
In a
statement, the People’s Forum reiterated the concern and
apprehension the civil-society groups raised at last
year’s PDF meeting in Cebu, regarding ODA’s longstanding
structural inadequacies and failings that negated its
avowed purpose and its effectiveness.
Briones,
a former national treasurer, said that aid does not go
to intended beneficiaries and does not effectively
contribute to sustainable human development, as measured
by the Millennium Development Goals.
The
decisive factors in “exorcising and dismantling the
evils associated with the present crisis of ODA,” the
forum concluded, are the people themselves and their own
organizations.
The
group will issue a Citizen’s Development Agenda
embodying the output of the one-day forum. |
