To follow in a separate email is a copy of the email to President Benigno Aquino III on the subject: FRAMEWORK OF TRAIL-BLAZING MACRO ANTI-CORRUPTION PROGRAM, which includes the crucial role of COA in an all-out anti-corruption war. A hard copy and shorter version of this email addressed to the President was personally transmitted to the Records Section of Malacanang on April 25, 2011.
As you are aware, under a basic internal control rule learned from the academe, no one person should have complete control of transactions. In the real world, the rule can be logically extended to mean that a government organization—under the control of one official—should not be given complete control of transactions either, because if that one official becomes corrupt, the organization is tantamount to one person unwarrantedly given complete control of transactions.
When COA totally abolished PRE-AUDIT in 1995, the big-spending Executive Branch was in effect unwarrantedly given COMPLETE CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT TRANSACTIONS—from planning to execution and payment. Thus, the above INTERNAL CONTROL rule against giving of complete control of transactions to one person or organization was violated. The result was of course repeated multi-billion-peso CORRUPTION from irresistibly tempting OPPORTUNITY for it, spawned by lack of CHECKS and BALANCES that equated to absence of INTERNAL CONTROL.
In essence, the act of abolishing the corruption-prevention COA pre-audit and shifting to corruption-prone 100% COA post audit—despite absence of martial law—constituted AUDIT MALPRACTICE by CPAs in the COA Commission Proper, which malpractice should never be repeated. The consequent staggering corruption losses brought to the fore the indispensable role of COA in the nation’s anti-corruption program, such as that emailed to President Aquino. To quote from it: “If corruption in the government’s roughly TWO-TRILLION-PESO annual expenditure is to be prevented prior to consummation on a sustained basis, there is simply no alternative to tapping the services of the one and only one independent government office that can provide indispensable CHECKS and BALANCES in government—the Commission on Audit.” Through its selective pre-audit, complemented by management audit, COA is crucial to the strengthening of anti-corruption INTERNAL CONTROL in government.
Today, let there be a new day and fresh start for COA under its new leadership. May COA succeed in its mission to serve the now roughly 100 million Filipinos.
MARCELO L. TECSON
A Concerned Citizen
May 6, 2011
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