EDITORIAL - Vanguard against corruption

Any genuine campaign to stamp out corruption calls for a strong, independent auditing agency. The Commission on Audit is one of the vanguards against graft. The COA rank and file should never lose sight of their constitutional mandate as the agency gets a new chairperson.

Rizalina Justol is taking over the top COA post from Michael Aguinaldo, whose seven-year term ended on Feb. 2. Justol served as COA auditor when President Duterte was mayor of Davao City. Prior to her new posting, she was the deputy executive secretary for finance and administration in the Office of the President.

As the President himself has acknowledged, corruption has become deeply entrenched in government, and there are certain agencies that are “rotten to the core.” Even during the COVID pandemic, graft cases have been filed against public officials including barangay captains for the misuse of emergency assistance funds.

Probes by the two chambers of Congress uncovered alleged corruption even in the purchase of COVID protective equipment from Pharmally Pharmaceuticals by the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management. The President had constantly railed against the probes particularly by the Senate, and had demanded that the COA audit the Philippine Red Cross, whose chairman Richard Gordon is leading the Senate’s Pharmally probe.

Even before the pandemic, however, the President had been a critic of the COA, saying at one point – in what Malacañang later stressed was a joke – that its auditors should be kidnapped and tortured for hampering the implementation of government projects.

The complaint might be valid, but the extent of corruption in government makes it even more important to strengthen the COA rather than denigrate the work of state auditors. Justol should know this well enough, along with the importance of the commission’s independence, even from the appointing power. She and the COA must remain true to their constitutional mandate.