Top secret audit mechanism
The audit mechanism announced by Heidi Mendoza in America to be used in the scrutiny of the pork barrel of members of Congress was no other than the Citizen Participatory Audit or CPA. The most objectionable hidden component of this top-secret mechanism was the premature release by the civil society members of the audit team of the initial adverse findings to the media.
In a press statement on 16 August 2013, CoA Chair Grace Pulido Tan said, “The special audit was conducted by the Special Audits Office of the commission starting on 10 June 10 2010, with fieldwork and validation.”
Take note of “10 June 2010” when the Commission Proper was still composed of Chairman Reynaldo Villar and Commissioner Juanito Espino. Villar and Espino, as a collegial body, planned and crafted the audit program in accordance with the Constitution. Chairman Villar issued the office order designating the audit team leader and members.
President Noynoy Aquino appointed Grace Pulido Tan as CoA chairman and Mendoza as CoA commissioner on 5 April 2011. According to CoA old-timers who were saddened by the event, upon the assumption of the new Commission Proper, the clouds hovering over the CoA compound along Commonwealth Avenue became dark, and ever since, according to them, the sun could hardly be seen over the area.
CoA started to put into place the mechanism to examine the pork barrel allocations of members of Congress. It was a secret that only Tan and Mendoza knew about. Not even Commissioners Espino and Rowena Guanzon were allowed to know “what’s cooking.”
The installation of the audit mechanism was the most secretive audit planning ever conceived by the Commission Proper. It reminded me of the secret Manhattan Project for the preparation of the Atomic Bomb in the closing stages of World War II in 1945. At the time, when the entire world least expected it, and when the Japanese nation was just waking up on the morning of August 1945, the first Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima City. It devastated the metropolis and killed thousands of its population. Still not showing any signs of surrendering, Uncle Sam dropped a second Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki destroying the city and again killing thousands
Similarly, with the secrecy of a military operation, and with the intent to destroy the targets by surprise to maximize the effectiveness of its devastating force, CoA launched its secret audit mechanism.
Similar to the dropping of two atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, after three years and four months of auditing strictly in accordance with the audit mechanism announced by Mendoza in Washington, D.C., then CoA chairman Tan also dropped two bombs.
First, on 16 August 2013, via worldwide telecast, heard and seen throughout the world, and second, a few months after, she announced the release of 6,000 notices of disallowance covering allegedly illegal disbursements of
Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF funds by lawmakers, not included in what CoA previously announced as its final and complete audit report released on 16 August 2013.
This spectacular performance of Tan and Mendoza that destroyed the image and dignity of the Republic of the Philippines worldwide will remain forever a global shame that exploded to the world during their incumbency.
The 700 unresolved cases of appeals constituting part of the present 4,800 backlogs of the Commission Proper can easily be disposed of by CoA Chairman Gamaliel Cordoba, who now heads the Commission Proper, if he takes the historic and unprecedented move to nullify the PDAF audit and the report thereon, to save the lawmakers from indictment and public shaming without Constitutional and legal bases.
It can be done, and CoA officials who committed the unconstitutional and illegal wrong will have no single basis to stop Mr. Cordoba.
“CoA started to put into place the mechanism to examine the pork barrel allocations of members of Congress.
“It was a secret that only Tan and Mendoza knew about. Not even Commissioners Espino and Rowena Guanzon were allowed to know.