Tancangco to COA: Don’t look at me

In law, there can’t be guilt by association. You don’t condemn a woman for being a wife of a kidnapper. You don’t send to the gallows the baby of a rapist. Common sense tells us so.

Yet guilt by association is what Comelec found in the Citizens’ Battle Against Corruption (CIBAC), which won 2.1 percent of the votes for party- list last May. Comelec disqualified CIBAC from seating a sectoral rep in Congress, along with Mamamayan Ayaw sa Droga, Association of Philippine Electric Cooperatives, Veterans Federation Party, Abag Promdi, Nationalist People’s Coalition and Lakas-NUCD. It said that the first three receive(d) funds from government through Malacañang, the National Electrification Administration and Veterans Bank, respectively. The last three represent not marginalized sectors, as the Constitution mandates, but politicians who were able to run national campaigns in past elections.

In CIBAC’s case, Commissioner Resurreccion Borra said it is a religious organization. His supposed proof: CIBAC’s first nominee to Congress is Joel Villanueva, son of Bro. Eddie Villanueva of the Jesus Is Lord born-again movement. What Borra failed to note is that CIBAC’s second nominee, broadcaster Kim Bernardo, is Catholic. It’s third nominee, Atty. Jess Martinez, is a mainstream Protestant from the United Church of Christ in the Philippines. If at all, CIBAC is a multidenominated group.

CIBAC banks not on specific sects but on moral values in its crusade against decay in government and society. Founded in 1997 by Joe Calida, now justice undersecretary, it was among the many disgruntled people’s organizations that brought impeachment charges against Joseph Estrada. Joel became first nominee because, at 29, he is the youngest of the three leaders and represents the youth’s aspiration for moral regeneration.

Other party-list winners, Akbayan and newcomer Bayan Muna, had protested the Comelec accreditation of the six other groups. No complaint was ever brought against CIBAC, which gave Comelec no legal ground to reopen its registration. Yet Borra did reopen, for reasons only he knows.

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There’s more than meets the eye in Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco’s running battle with Chairman Alfredo Benipayo and Borra. This will be gleaned from her reply to the Commission on Audit’s tentative findings of bungling and fund misuse in her National Precinct Mapping and Computerized Voters List (CVL) Verification Project. The reply, in fact, makes the items in the COA report look like half-truths and total lies.

The report said Tancangco had used up 56 percent of the project’s P500-million budget by last March, yet was able to map only 32 percent of the precincts. Too, that her dozens of team members were able to encode only 43 percent of the verified CVLs. Tancangco says the figures may be right, but it wasn’t her fault. She could have finished everything in time for last May 14 election, she said. But on the prodding of Borra and ill advice of several Comelec managers, the newly-appointed Benipayo urged the commissioners en banc to stop the project on March 9. Thus, the incomplete mapping and verification, which Tancangco says she intends to continue in time for next year’s barangay election.

Tancangco also refutes COA findings that her mapping-verification staff has not liquidated 70 percent of their P199 million in cash advances. Fine, she says, COA rules and Comelec’s operations manual requires fund liquidation within 30 days of use or 60 days on nonuse. But she said that when the COA team started its audit, her staff had just begun to fill out the liquidation forms to meet the 30-day deadline. Besides, the en banc decision to shelve the project also stated that it should resume right after the May 14 balloting. Thus, Tancangco said, the unused funds were not yet subject the 60-day liquidation period when the audit began. Besides, if the COA team had a hard time getting pertinent documents from the Comelec finance department, she insinuated that they should ask Borra about it, for the latter had been the agency’s executive director for years.

Tancangco belies the audit claim that she gave P82 million in cash advances to 98 managers and staff who were not covered by surety bonds. And that she gave another P56 million to 13 casual or temporary hires. On the contrary, she says, she made sure that the 98 employees listed in the COA report were covered by fidelity bonds from the Bureau of Treasury. Again, she hinted that certain finance department officers might not have released the documents to COA – presumably to put her in a bad light. About 13 "casual or temporary" personnel, Tancangco argues that some were "temporary" only in promotion to higher rank, others were "casual" or coterminus with her Comelec stint. She assigned them as special disbursing officers nonetheless because most regional directors and provincial supervisors declined to handle the huge amount of money to pay verification field workers.

Another item that Tancangco belies is that which states that in many instances managers and staff were given new cash advances although they had yet, under COA and Comelec rules, to liquidate earlier ones. Check with the finance department, Tancangco says, "we released new advances only after they liquidated. A certificate to this effect (was issued) by the chief accountant of the voucher processing division." Tancangco wonders if a high Comelec official again prevented the release of such certificates for COA to check.

Tancangco acknowledges, however, that her precinct mapping and CVL verification project did not produce the desired result, that is, clean, honest, orderly and credible elections. Last May 14’s balloting was one of the messiest since the sham elections during the Marcos dictatorship. "But don’t look at me," Tancangco cries. She said she had argued for completing the project in time for last Election Day despite frequent needling by Comelec commissioners and senior officers to scrap it. Her verification staff had discovered that in cities and poblacions, about 20 to 50 percent of the CVLs were either padded or juggled with voters’ names. She also noted that because precincts were set up by alphabetical instead of residential listings of barangay dwellers, the CVLs were easy to pad with fictitious voters or multiple registrants. Thus, her desire to finish the project.

Alas, Tancangco says, the en banc outvoted her in shelving it. But not before she fired off a memo warning them of the potential chaos that lack of precinct mapping and reliance on the old 1998 CVLs would cause. She also said in the memo that she should not be blamed for such chaos because she wanted the project completed. Finally, she herself asked for a performance-finance audit of the unfinished work.

Tancangco got her audit all right. But its findings blame her for the very mess she warned Benipayo and Borra against.

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