The COA is on the case

I’m not one for sloganeering, but “the COA is on the case” seems to be a good catchphrase to describe the work being accomplished at the Commission on Audit. While Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales and her office may be the top-of-mind agency in the war against graft and corruption, the COA is by no means less important. To put it in a more creative manner, the office of the Ombudsman clears the obstructions along President Aquino’s “Daang Matuwid,” while the COA serves as the streetlamps that light the way. And in terms of shedding light on ”dark places” – i.e. questionable government transactions – there is no escaping its beam under the law.

The Philippine Constitution itself guarantees the independence and full authority of the COA to examine all accounts pertaining to government revenues, expenditures, and any use of government resources. Moreover, to ensure that those engaged in crooked deals cannot use clever maneuvering and legal loopholes to avoid scrutiny, no law may be passed that can limit the COA’s ability to audit accounts. In other words, if you’ve got something to hide, they have the unbridled capability to find it.

With this great power comes great responsibility, and thankfully, the Commission is headed by three upstanding and dynamic individuals. Chairperson Ma. Gracia Pulido Tan, formerly from the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) and the Department of Finance, is actually the first woman to be named as head of the COA. Make no mistake about it, though: her multidisciplinary expertise in law and accounting, finance, management, and governance allows her to excel in the full spectrum of her job. Backing her up are Commissioner Juanito Espino, who had an eminent career with both the United Nations and the World Bank, and Commissioner Heidi Mendoza.

A number of local government units (LGUs) are already beginning to realize that the COA means business. The City of Dagupan, for example, has been in the news lately because of the standstill happening in their budget approval hearings. Understandably, Mayor Benjie Lim and City Administrator Vlad Mata want the funds to be released as soon as possible, but the COA and the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) of Dagupan have questions that need to be answered first.

For instance, the audit team leader of Dagupan discovered that approximately P27 million of the city’s contracts and expenses had no legal basis whatsoever. This is because under the law, the SP needs to approve all development fund transactions before they are disbursed, which in this case they did not. The same is true for around P13 million worth of calamity funds, which were used without any state of calamity being declared. The COA is likewise requiring a full tracking of how this P13 million was spent, given that none was submitted to them.

Auditors further realized that more than P88 million worth of properties that the Dagupan City government bought are legally not theirs. From a valuation perspective, the fact that these titles have not been transferred has a profound effect, given depreciation costs and tax expenses. From an accountability standpoint, the people of Dagupan were under the impression that they owned something, when in fact they do not.

As SP presiding officer Vice Mayor Belen Fernandez puts it, “We admire the COA’s focus on doing things right, rather than just doing things quickly.” These days, this is certainly a trait worth emulating. With the COA on the case, government agencies and LGUs should be extra mindful of how they spend the money entrusted to them by the Filipino people.”

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My good friend Dr. Bernardo “Ka Bernie” Dizon, a well-known pomologist, recently sent me a sack of dried guyabano (sour sop) leaves to make into tea. He swears by the efficacy of the concoction of the sour sop and tanglad and pandan leaves. So every day, for the past two weeks, I’ve been taking the tea during meals and at snack time, hoping that what Ka Bernie and a number of the tea-takers claim will rid me of some of my health problems (diabetes and laziness). I add home-made syrup to sweeten the concoction, take it hot, or with ice cubes. What Ka Bernie didn’t know is that I have plenty of guyabano seedlings in my garden, but thinking only of having the fruit into a beverage, or processed into candies, tarts, shakes, ice cream, and sherbet. Now, I am told that guyabano leaves are even more efficacious as tea or juice than the fruit.

Guyabano is called sour sop in English, guanabana in Spanish, and graviola in Brazil. To be proven by research and documentation yet, the claim is that the guyabano tree is called a “miraculous” fruit that contains natural cancer cells that are 10,000 times stronger than a chemotherapy. Another claim is that guyabano is effective against internal parasites and worms, lowers high blood pressure, and is used for depression, stress and nervous disorders.

Of course pharmaceutical companies and doctors will pooh-pooh such claims as folkloric herbal concoctions. Be that as it may, a good sector has, for hundreds of years, been using herbs, raw fruit, bark and leaves of trees and plants for the treatment and easing of body aches and pains.

As to the efficacy of guyabano tea leaves, Ka Bernie himself says his eyesight became better and his arthritic pains are hardly recurring, just two months after he began drinking the concoction. Writer Celo Lagman writes in Balita, that Bernie Padila of Kasibu, Nueva Vizcaya, who had been suffering from the inconveniences brought about by prostate cancer (Stage l), after two months of guyabano tea-taking, has been able to urinate naturally, without the use of expensive drugs prescribed by doctors. The same experience is related by Engineer Max Perez of Cabiao, Nueva Ecija.

Celo writes, “Sa panahong ito na nakakalula ang presyo ng gamut, malaki ang maitutulong ng mga herbal plants, lalo na ang miracle guyabano tree.”

Guyabano tea, anyone?

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My beloved mother-in-law, Olivia Lagasca Suarez, passed away February 1st in San Jose, California. Her ashes have been brought over, and friends and relatives may wish to have a reunion and visit at the Funeraria Paz, Sucat, sometime during the whole day of February 26, and attend a memorial service in the evening. Interment of her ashes will be on the next day, February 27, at 10 in the morning at the Manila Memorial Park, Sucat. Mama Olive is survived by her daughters Evangeline, Lourdes, Rosario and Cecilia; grandchildren Marissa, Miriam, Melinda and Louie, Rommel, Astrude, Armi and Julie Ann, and Andres, Lito, Jane, Ronald and Lawrence, sons-in-law, and grandchildren and great grandchildren.

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Email: [email protected]