Accountable and transparent

What’s the use of intelligence funds if they fail at gathering intelligence? Or if there is a sore lack of intelligence in the first place? These are the questions Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian will probably ask when the Senate scrutinizes the proposed intelligence funds of law enforcement agencies for 2025 in light of dismissed Bamban Mayor Alice Guo’s escape from the country. Guo had apparently left the country a month before authorities found out. That’s inexcusable and indefensible in so far as asking for intelligence funds.

The topic of Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIF) has come to light in recent weeks, starting with the hearing on how the Office of the Vice President (OVP) spent ?125 million in 11 days. The OVP is asking for ?2 billion for its budget for 2025. Heated exchanges between Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio and lawmakers ensued when Carpio refused to answer how her office directly spent the people’s money. The Commission on Audit recently issued a notice of disallowance of ?73 million pesos spent by the OVP in 2022.

The vice president’s refusal to explain how these funds were spent and the escape of Alice Guo as a failure of intelligence on the part of law enforcement raises valid questions about whether these funds help at all in their purported use. What makes it more absurd is how the funds are shielded from accountability and transparency. I agree that a large chunk of these funds would be put to better use in other government agencies where their expenditures are tangible.

Going back to Guo’s escape, how could this have happened if law enforcement agencies were armed with a sizeable budget for intelligence? It took a whole month for them to realize she had left the country. Is there something more sinister going on? Perhaps the distribution of intelligence funds does not trickle down, prompting some in the lower echelons to “improvise and adapt”?

Guo's movement should have been monitored as soon as she became a person of interest in the investigations into illegal POGO hubs and operations, which eventually led to many more criminal activities. I would think these law enforcement agencies would be hard-pressed to answer questions once the Senate investigates. They may go the route taken by the OVP in refusing to answer, even becoming combative such as what the vice president did. Perhaps it is time to revisit these CIFs much like what was done to the infamous pork barrel funds. Funds that cannot be accounted for should not exist in the government. Check that. The use of people’s money must always be accountable and transparent.