P102B down the drain

Editorial

The Palace had a hard time extricating the administration of Noynoy from the damning report of the Commission on Audit (CoA) that detailed losses the government incurred running to P102 billion from irregularities in 2011, the first full year of Noynoy’s term. The efforts to deflect the issue were patently pathetic.

The report clearly covered 2011 and it was transmitted to the office of Noynoy and the Senate President and the Speaker all at the same day, the reason that the Palace was trying hard to ascribe the report as that of belonging to the excesses of Noynoy’s predecessor. And it was truly quite a feat.

Grace Tan, the CoA commissioner, obviously with goading from the Palace also chirped in that the reported anomalies in the review did not necessarily reflect those that happened under the administration of Noynoy and not all were instances of stealing from government.

The Palace was extra careful about the reported P3 billion in unaccounted money from the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program for good reasons since P42 billion of the budget this year goes the program and a much more next year when the mid-term elections are held.

The Tribune had already earlier reported that Dinky Soliman’s Social Services department and handler of the conditional cash transfer program failed to meet its deadline in liquidating the unaccounted money and no doubt, the same CCT officers will again not to be able to liquidate these funds, or even come up with an honest reporting of the failure of the CCT program.

It was, however, hard to evade the detailed audit of of the CoA report, which even gave a breakdown of what it termed pecuniary losses to the government for “calendar year 2011.”

Under the heading pecuniary losses, the biggest loss item was underassessment and undercollection worth P21 billion followed by unauthorized, irregular and unnecessary expenses worth P19 billion, and the absence of bidding or awarding of contracts not in accordance with the procurement law worth P15 billion.

The official Palace line was that the report should not be viewed the way it is, saying it is just but one of many CoA reports submitted to the President.

The report indeed was long, which was more than 100 pages, but all that it contained were reports on audit of transactions of agencies that happened last year — not the years 2007 to 2009, as being claimed by both the Palace and Tan.

The Palace said a wrong conclusion was made as a result of just looking merely at the pecuniary losses as defined by CoA. Of course, the conclusion that it wanted formed was its standard line that everything crooked should be blamed on the nine-year excesses of Gloria.

The losses totaled P102 billion and it all happened in just one year and in the first full year of Noynoy yet.

Even the defense that most of the anomalies were related to the previous administration and that these were committed between 2002 and 2009 do not offer any consolation to the credibility of Noynoy since the result of the audit, going by that line, means that most of the irregularities of the past have persisted under his administration.

The straight path of Noynoy seems to be a mere extension of what he usually assails as the crooked past.

Consider P102 billion losses for the government on the first of Noy’s six years.

Corruption or incompetence, either way, Filipinos are having a raw deal.