AT the rate and scale public funds have been lost to graft and corruption in recent times (in several cases involving hundreds of millions and even billions of pesos), we have somehow developed a resistance, or become more and more insensitive, to incidences of petty graft. It’s just like our tolerance to antibiotics. Stronger doses tend to make your body less responsive to weaker ones.

We have become so jaded that the first thing we ask whenever an irregularity in the bureaucracy is uncovered is how much the government lost. If the amount involved is less than, say, a million bucks, we tend to regard it as inconsequential. We automatically wave or brush it off—like an unwanted dirt on the sleeve—and then promptly forget about it.

We seem to have forgotten that it is the culture of petty graft in any bureaucracy that has invariably served as the staging ground for granddaddies of graft or wholesale plunder.

We only give national attention to a case of petty graft when there is an element of prominence (as when a nationally known figure is involved), or when the graft case concerns a quirky item that makes the whole thing absolutely ludicrous.

Remember the Sandiganbayan conviction of former Parañaque City Mayor Joey Marquez and three other city officials for the illegal purchase of brooms or walis tingting at an overprice of P462,708?

Marquez, et al. would have been thrown into jail for 30 to 50 years over such a highly unglamorous, ridiculous item. Fortunately, the Supreme Court, on appeal, later threw out the conviction based on the finding that the city government was not really “grossly disadvantaged” by the procurement.

Navotas City, headed by Mayor John Reynaldo M. Tiangco, not to be outdone, has its own version of a procurement irregularity that also centers on walis tingting.

You might call it a “remake” of the Parañaque case, but with a few original twists—including an attempt to cover up the story with a gag order issued by Mayor Tiangco—lest the total disregard for procurement rules in City Hall be brutally exposed.

Actually, the amount involved may seem too small to really bother about, or just about P322,500 which was actually paid by the city government to an alleged favored supplier, a Bulacan-based hardware store called DEMRA General Merchandise.

But the case, as recounted by former City Administrator Ranel Ruiz (husband of the principal complainant), has shown how the city government—through its bids and awards committee or BAC, which apparently works hand-in-glove with the mayor’s office—had been defying government regulations and the national procurement law to favor certain suppliers.

When the complainant discovered that the BAC had tampered not only with the bid but also other public documents to justify the walis tingting bid award, Ruiz found another basis for a separate complaint against the city administrator—this time for falsification of public documents.

What complicated matters was the issuance by Mayor Tiangco of the controversial Memorandum Order (MO) 327-11, which required all offices in the city government to secure his approval before releasing a single piece of document from city hall. This MO, issued on March 11, 2011, was issued just when complainant Ruiz was formally asking for copies of public documents pertaining to the conduct of the bidding.

The MO, Ruiz pointed out, was in violation of the constitutional dictum on government transparency.

Mayor Tiangco, in other words, wanted to shield the BAC’s “special” operations from public scrutiny. (Not long after, however, Mayor Tiangco had to exempt certain offices from his MO—including the assessor’s office and the offices in charge of birth and other certificates. All other offices remained under the information clampdown.)

This is why when complainant Ruiz formally asked the city accountant to furnish her copies of official disbursement documents in relation to the walis tinging bidding, her letter was promptly referred to City Legal Officer Emmanuel M. Pantoja.  Pantoja, as expected, invoked Mayor Tiangco’s MO 327-11 as basis for refusing her request, in a memorandum dated March 15, 2011.

So what started as a seemingly innocuous case filed with the Ombudsman has given birth to two or three other related cases questioning the alleged irregularities being committed by officials of Navotas City who seem to be enjoying the doting protection of their mayor. Who knows, it could lead to other, bigger cases with respect to the city’s big-ticket disbursement programs, which Mayor Tiangco seems to have kept pretty well under wraps so far.

Already, there is loose talk about the acquisition by the city of a P1.5-billion gas-turbine power-barge complex. Actually, the power-barge complex was practically handed over by Hopewell Philippines Inc., an independent power producer or IPP, a foreign-based firm that built the power barge under a build-operate-transfer arrangement with the National Power Corp.

Sources said Hopewell had run up a backlog in unpaid real-estate taxes to the tune of P200 million, which became reason for Navotas City to seize the facility. Hopewell gave it up without a fight, probably thinking it was due to turn over the plant to the national government, anyway.

The sources revealed that the complex, made up of four segments, was assessed to be worth P1.5 billion. But the city government, in auctioning it off to recover the real-estate taxes due it, was able to dispose of the facility for P453 million.

The question being asked in the Navotas City Hall is how come the P453 million, which was supposed to be deposited with the Development Bank of the Philippines to maximize interest earnings, had earned only a little over P1 million when it could have easily earned over P9 million in the first month alone after it was deposited.

The source said: “The records show that the P453 million—without such validating documents such as deposit slip and the like—shows earnings from only P53 million. Where is the P400 million, and why are its earnings not being faithfully monitored by the city treasurer and accountant?”

The proceeds from the power-barge sale is only an example. There are also other sources that claim the city council had approved a P270-million outlay for the building of a flood-control dike in the coastal areas of Navotas as a means of ending the ordeal of people living in those areas from periodic floods.

The city council allegedly approved the outlay without being shown a feasibility or project study, let alone a rough design to show what kind of a dike would be built. Businessmen friendly to city hall, it is claimed, would be the lucky contractors for the dike project.

These are only a couple of the horror stories one would inevitably hear as one goes deeper into the goings on in Navotas City under Mayor Tiangco.

Whatever the truth or actuality may be, Navotas folk would certainly have a right to know.  But for now, one thing is crystal-clear. Mayor Tiangco runs his city like a tight ship—one in which nothing is allowed to leak out, especially potentially damaging information.

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