Quezon City derides Defensor accusation

MANILA, Philippines — The recent allegations propounded by Anak Kalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor against the Quezon City government have “laughably and woefully backfired,” city spokesperson Pia Morato said yesterday.

Defensor earlier released a statement to media claiming that the Commission on Audit was “questioning the validity of QC’s P479 million worth of pandemic procurements,” and that the COA said the “city government violated the Procurement Law and its implementing regulations.”

He also claimed that this was based on a recent COA report, and went as far as saying that the document was “newly posted on the COA website.”

No such “new report” was posted on the COA website, Morato said, noting that Defensor’s allegations were based on a report posted on the COA website in July 2021 as a partial section of Quezon City’s year-end audit report for 2020.

“The good congressman should definitely hire better researchers, and a better PR team,” Morato said. “When they sent their statement to the media, the reporters and editors checked the validity of their claims. They found out that the tidbits shared by the Defensor camp were part of the year-end COA report wherein Quezon City was actually awarded with the highest audit rating in the history of the city. If the intention was to tarnish the reputation of the city government, therefore, the complete opposite happened,” she emphasized.

Defensor’s allegations were referenced in only three out of the 42 pages of the full COA report.

Furthermore, rather than “questioning the validity” of the P479 million worth of pandemic procurements, the COA merely pointed out that the complete documentation for these procurements had yet to be submitted during the time of the report’s writing.

No violations were cited, as the section was written as a request rather than a reprimand.

“Within a matter of weeks, the city government submitted all the supporting documents pertaining to this P479 million. The COA was so satisfied with our paperwork and transparency that they gave us the highest unqualified opinion for the entire year,” Morato said.

“Defensor has spent a lot of time in the past two years staying indoors, so he might be a bit confused. It’s 2022 already, let’s not invent things from references that happened last 2020,” she concluded.