Dog-day afternoon

I spoke too soon.  I mean, I wrote too soon. Less than a month ago, the Congressional Committee on Justice slammed the door on the Tamano supplement to the original Pulido impeachment complaint.

The committee did not follow proper procedures. It rejected the supplement without even bothering to discuss the substantive contents with the members. In a Congress noted for long-winded speeches and lengthy procedures, the exercise took only two hours.

I wrote then that refusal to allow legal redress to those who believed the President should be held accountable for violation of the constitution might signal that there is no hope in following legal procedures. I warned that extralegal and extrajudicial action will become more attractive to those who have given up hope in ever making the President accountable for the increasing long list of issues against her.

Last Thursday’s dog-day afternoon showed what happens when even legal alternatives are not given a chance. Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim have been roundly criticized by many for their so-called caper. Without necessarily justifying their actions, the public should not forget what drove them to seemingly desperate acts.

When open violation of the simplest rules of accountability continue, when cries for justice remain unheard, when open bribery continue unabated and legal procedures are ignored with impunity, acts of defiance will erupt at the most unpredictable times.

Oh no, not again!

The dust has hardly settled on the series of scandals implicating the Office of the President. Still, another issue has erupted.  This time, it is on the Commission on Audit report for the year 2006.

The report on the Office of the President includes a long list of infractions which have serious implications for accountability.

Unliquidated cash advances

While the problem of unliquidated cash advances is common among government agencies, the magnitude of the amounts involved is mind-boggling.  The fact that no less than the Office of the President is ignoring a simple audit rule sends the wrong signals to the public and gives a bad example to misbehaving public officials.

As of December 31, 2006, P615 million in cash advances remain unliquidated. The rule is that accountable officials have to render reports on the utilization of cash advances which are entrusted to them within a year, or earlier. Everyone knows that when these accounts remain unliquidated, total expenditures will tend to be understated while the receivables account will be bloated. 

For this infraction alone, there is undercounting of expenditures to the tune of P615 million.

The more serious problem, of course, is that of accountability. Public funds were entrusted to public officials. It is their duty to report what happened to these funds.

Expenses from donations not in accordance with purpose

The Office of the President receives donations from various sources for different purposes.  For example, it received P65.4 million in donations for calamity victims, such as the Southern Leyte landslide, Typhoon Milenyo victims, and relief and rehabilitation of Albay  province, as well as for  socio-economic projects.

I wonder what the “generous” donors will say if they learned that a significant part of their donations went to burial expenses, hotel expenses, maintenance of the Malacañang golf course, summit conferences, and a vaguely worded “donation to foundation”?

Again, the accountability rule here is very simple.  Donations must be used for the purposes intended for them.

One can perhaps surmise that burial expenses were incurred to bury calamity victims. However, it is difficult to identify calamity work with hotel expenses, summits and donations to foundations. 

As for maintenance of the palace golf course, can a claim be made that sympathy for victims of catastrophes is enhanced while an official is also improving his golf handicap? Or that perhaps the serene ambiance of a golf course is the perfect setting for reflections on how to improve social services?

Abnormal negative balances in cash accounts

The Commission on Audit also reports that some cash accounts have “abnormal negative balances” totaling P4.4 million. This is a contradiction in terms.  A cash account should have cash in it. One cannot have “negative cash” unless the account is overdrawn. This is not allowed especially for government offices.

More analyses

One does not need a fertile imagination to wonder if all the monies which are unaccounted for, unliquidated and unrecorded would have funded those frequent public distributions of cash to local officials and congressmen.

Space limitations do not allow us to share more details on the COA report. For more analyses, please watch The Reporters’ Notebook in GMA Channel 7. This is on Tuesday, December 4, after the evening news, Saksi. 

Why do we have this nagging feeling that the short-lived rebellion by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim at the Peninsula Hotel in Makati on Thursday would certainly not be the last?

I spoke too soon.  I mean, I wrote too soon. Less than a month ago, the Congressional Committee on Justice slammed the door on the Tamano supplement to the original Pulido impeachment complaint.

It is difficult to escape clichés—at work, at home. In almost every aspect of your life, you will hear them, even use them.

The Entrepreneur: 7% GDP growth in 2007: Can we do it again?

The Senate should be able to finish its work on the proposed budget for 2008 before the end of the year, so that we can start the New Year with a timely spending package. The Senate has temporarily suspended legislative inquiries so it can concentrate on deliberating on the proposed budget.

It is well that Congress and the newly established Procurement Board have decided to look deeper into the whys and wherefores of that World Bank board decision deferring consideration of the second tranche amounting to $232 million of the bank-funded National Road Improvement Program (NRIP).

People speak of the growing problem in hushed tones, respectful of cultural diversity. For some, the encounters are limited to the supermarket line where some South Koreans brusquely cut in as they do at the airport where police shrug in subservient deference.

In the bedroom of my apartment in Honolulu, I watched the Filipino Channel news coverage of the reported walkout of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim from the court hearing in Makati.