All barangays should also be audited by COA
One will be surprised how rampant is graft in our country. Our thesis is that, in the government, corruptions are endemic and nation-wide, massive and widespread. Aside from the senators who are being detained for alleged plunder and in addition to the congressmen and Cabinet members who are being implicated by the DOJ in the PDAP and DAP scams, the LGU's have not been immune to the contamination of the graft bug. Days ago, in this column, we have proposed that the COA should audit the senators, congressmen, governors, and mayors prior to the filing of their certificates of candidacy for re-election or for higher office. The barangays should not be exempted. If COA has no personnel to do it all, then it can outsource the auditing.
It is our suggestion, by way of a peoples' initiative, that any and all incumbent or former public officials who aspire for elective public office again, should be required to present a COA clearance as a condition for accepting his bona-fide candidacy. If that requires an amendment of the law or even of the Constitution, then let it be. If there is no more time before the 2016 polls, then let it be in the legislative or constitutional pipeline for the midterm elections in 2019. What matters most is that we are looking at the long-term, the bigger picture and the longer time perspectives. Those who seek a political mandate should have the burden of proving first their integrity.
Corruptions in the barangays are usually instigated by the mayor or the congressman who has normally the better skills, the stronger and more callous wills, and the longer experience in juggling and diverting public funds through machinations and schemes that they have long tried and tested. These corruptions are usually perpetrated with the indispensable cooperation of some internal and even some resident COA auditors who are allegedly co-opted and corrupted by the politicians at the head of the local government units. For money, malice, and other selfish designs, they manipulate the documentation and the facilitation of the process and divide the loot. If there is prima-facie evidence, barangay officials should be prosecuted, and if guilty, jailed.
The barangay IRA to the tunes ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions and even billions in the richest urban and metropolitan barangays, are reportedly being manipulated by the mayors who hold the barangay captains in their necks, and the people are being robbed of public funds right before their noses. A citizenry that does not care, that is too trusting or neglectful, or ignorant and too busy with their own struggles for survival, would remain clueless on how the barangay officials, under the directions of the mayor, would pocket public funds. And all these years, the COA just looked the other way. Furthermore, the AGUINALDO doctrine should be abrogated and should not be invoked to forgive an erring public official including those in the barangays.
Either for lack of personnel or for lack of time (alibis that we should not accept for reneging on their sworn duties), the COA has for long neglected the barangays as the most rampant sources of corruption. In its fixation to catch the ''big fish,'' the COA has not focused on the barangays, not even on the municipalities, cities and provinces. The COA auditors are very strict and unforgiving to the small fishes in the bureaucracy and known to issue negative audit findings against them. But they opt to neglect the multi-millions in the local government units, including the barangays. COA can tap independent auditing firms and individual accounting professionals to do these tasks.
All public officials, no matter how high or how low, should not be exempt from transparency and accountability. The COA should audit all the books of accounts, scrutinize all disbursements, assess the bidding and procurement procedures, look into mysterious and dummy suppliers and contractors, and dig into the tips of the icebergs shown by the Napoles scams. In this country, even the lowest barangay tanod can be corrupt and be corrupted. The examples were supposedly given by presidents, vice presidents, senators, and congressmen. That is their own version of leadership by example. That, to me, is Daang Natuwad. Shame, shame, shame.
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