COA’s anticorruption mandate

The testimony of auditors of the Commission on Audit (COA) in the ongoing impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte showed the significant role the COA plays in safeguarding the people’s money.

The auditors disclosed the various schemes the Vice President used to account for her use (or misuse) of millions of pesos in confidential funds that were given to her office.

They were able to successfully parry the attempts of the defense lawyer and some senator-judges to minimize the significance of their audit findings. Indeed, they were not auditors for nothing.

Sadly, the COA’s investigation of those transactions was limited to reviewing the acknowledged receipts and other documents submitted to supposedly liquidate the disbursed funds.

Unlike the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the country’s primary revenue collection agency, the COA does not have the personnel and facilities that can cross-check and verify the veracity of the documents submitted by the government offices it audits.

Note that the COA and Office of the Ombudsman (OMB) are constitutional offices that have been specifically mandated to watch over government offices to make sure they efficiently perform their duties and responsibilities, including the proper use of public funds.

To the credit of the OMB, it has, since the appointment of Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla, been making a good account of itself in its anticorruption activities.

With regard to the COA, in a recent budget hearing at the House of Representatives, COA assistant commissioner Lorna Cabochan expressed concern about her office’s capability to perform its mandate due to shortage of field auditors.

She said the COA needs 384 more auditors, plus additional funds for, among others, its Information Systems Strategic Plan, the construction or modernization of some of its buildings and the purchase of three motor vehicles.

(Incidentally, on top of budgetary constraints, the recruitment of additional auditors could be challenging considering that many Filipino accountants prefer to handle online accounting and auditing work assignments from companies based abroad that give higher pay, plus the ability to work from home.)

As things stand at present, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) does not seem inclined to grant the COA’s requests, not even to fund the purchase of a car for the COA’s office in the Negros Island Region. (What a bummer!)

The DBM’s lukewarm, if not dismissive, response to the COA’s “wish list,” couldn’t have come at the worst of times. Talk of bad timing.

Note that in the past months, the flood control projects scandal has been in the public eye and the floods that recently hit Metro Manila, Bulacan, and Pampanga, among others, showed the reality of the adverse effects of the scam perpetrated by some members of Congress in cooperation with their private contractors’ cohorts.

At the height of the typhoon, social media was replete with posts asking why, in spite of the billions in pesos allocated and spent for flood control projects, floods of unprecedented proportions had not been prevented, if not minimized to manageable levels.

Take a look at Bulacan.

The COA earlier reported that last year, only two auditors were assigned to the Department of Public Works and Highways’ engineering office in Bulacan, which has become the template for flood control corruption.

Aside from Bulacan, there are other areas in the country that are believed to have been inflicted with the same damage by their congressional representatives.

In a manner of speaking, the surface has barely been scratched to unravel the flood control projects that some members of Congress have used as a mechanism to line their pockets with the people’s money.

They await the audit findings needed to support the filing of complaints for misappropriation of public funds or, worse, the nonbailable crime of plunder.

Unless the COA’s corps of field auditors is beefed up immediately, the thorough audit investigation of those areas may have to be indefinitely deferred or done in spurts, giving the people behind the scandal time to falsify documents or make them disappear to avoid getting caught.

Digging through tons of paperwork to see if the proper procedures have been complied with in the disposition of the people’s money is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

And once an apparent violation is found and the government official concerned is made to explain, the auditor would have to practically do a reprise of what he or she had done earlier and more if the government official concerned happens to be politically influential.

It’s a task that requires a lot of patience, dedication, and expertise. And the COA auditors have shown they are up to it.

If the government wants COA to accomplish its constitutional mandate, it should give it the appropriate staff and instruments for that purpose.

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raul.palabrica@inquirer.net