An unsolicited advice to Governor Davide

It just makes me boil that the Department of Public Works & Highways went out of its way to get permission from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to cut those century-old Acacia trees that are lined up along the national highway a few kilometers before motorists get into the downtown area of the City of Carcar.I learned from the Seguras, my mother's side of the family that these Acacia trees were planted by my maternal grandfather Capt. Valeriano Segura who was then the first Highways Official for the Visayas and Mindanao. Of course anyone can question the veracity of this story. But what is unquestioned is that, these Acacia trees are older than almost all of us living in Cebu right now.

I have long requested the DPWH to look for a bypass road that would avoid that part of Carcar so as to avoid cutting those century-old trees for the simple reason that they are part and parcel of Carcar's rich history and heritage. My paternal grandparents, Don Jose Avila also hailed from Carcar and we still have properties there where our titles still state that we are part of the Commonwealth government of the United States.

At this point, I'm glad that the Philippine Earth Justice Center has now asked the National Historical Commission to issue a cease and desist order against the cutting of trees along this route. I'm not sure that this plan will work, but at least there are groups who are hell-bent on preventing the unnecessary destruction of those trees because we should be a people who help preserve trees because it is healthy for our environment. I fully support and concur with this proposal. I just hope that our DENR and DPWH officials would listen to us…after all; as  PNoy Aquino always says about the people…we are "The Boss".

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Surely by now…you folks out there must have realized that the Philippines earned the moniker as Asia's most corrupt nation despite our having a constitutionally mandated watchdog dubbed the Commission on Audit. If they didn't know…to many people COA means, Commission Or Audit! It may be a pun, but in truth, COA is supposed to catch crooks in the government by exposing their questionable expenses. But in the case of Janet Lim Napoles and her P10-billion scam, COA findings are what we call "Johnny-come-lately" they only surfaced because the whistle blowers already exposed those crooks.

This brings me to The Freeman's headline yesterday which blared "COA Tells Capitol Spend P107M Pork." COA belatedly found out that from the year 2009 to the year 2012, the Province of Cebu did not use some P107 million coming from the Priority Assistance Development Funds of senators Francis Pangilinan, Manuel Villar, Juan Ponce Enrile, Franklin Drilon, Loren Legarda and Pia Cayetano and from representatives Benhur Salimbangon, Gabriel Quisumbing, Pablo Garcia, Pablo John Garcia and Ak-bayan and DIWA Partylist in various amounts that you can read in that Freeman article yesterday.

In its announcement COA officials say "We are concerned that the constituents of the Province of Cebu may have been deprived of the benefits that would have ensued from the full utilization of the PDAF of the proponent legislators." First of all, did you even notice that the news report indicates that this report came from an unnamed COA official? Why can't these people openly say who they are?

What we are seeing here is a COA supposedly concerned that Cebuano constituents "may have been deprived" of the funds that was given for that purpose. But with the explosive revelation of the P10-billion Napoles scam, I would have expected a more cautious COA instead of these unnamed officials who are literally telling the officials of the Province of Cebu to spend the P107 million in pork money. What's wrong with COA these days? Have they thrown all caution to the wind?

I have an unsolicited advice for Governor Hilario Davide that before he spends that money. I suggest that he should first call an fact-finding body to first find out why these funds were unspent in the first place and to which body, cooperative, organization of non-government organization are supposed to be the beneficiaries of this pork fund? If this fact-finding body finds no irregularity in these transactions, only then should they realign these funds and spend them for their intended purposes.

Let me reiterate, COA is supposed to do a post audit…and therefore it is really up to them to stop local governments from spending Pork funds if they find any irregularities in these transactions. But as it is, we only hear of COA telling the Capitol to spend those funds. But how do we know that there could have been some irregularities in the disbursement of these funds?

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