EDITORIAL - Long overdue

Finally, the Presidential Commission on Good Government is headed for abolition. Two years is still a long wait for winding down the operations of an agency whose functions have largely been taken over by other offices such as the Department of Justice. Two years is still enough time for certain PCGG officials to indulge their penchant for globetrotting at taxpayers’ expense, with relatives or special friends in tow. But at least a timetable has been given, and an office that was never meant to be permanent will finally be shuttered.

As the Marcoses fled into exile in 1986, the first executive order issued by Corazon Aquino created a commission tasked to recover the wealth, estimated at billions of dollars, that the Marcoses were believed to have amassed illegally in the 20 years that Ferdinand Marcos ruled the country. Twenty-five years later, no member of the Marcos clan has spent a single minute behind bars, and no one seems poorer even after the confiscation of expensive real estate properties and over $300 million, now much larger because of earned interest, deposited in Swiss banks.

How any public official in this Third World country could accumulate such a fortune boggles the mind, but no one has been punished. Instead Imelda Marcos is again a member of the House of Representatives and the late dictator’s only son and namesake is a senator who has not ruled out a run for the presidency.

The full rehabilitation of the Marcoses is testament to the failure of the PCGG, which over the years became associated itself with abuse of power. In recent years, some of its officials displayed the type of profligacy, at taxpayers’ expense, that would have done Imeldific proud. Winding down in the PCGG should include an investigation by government auditors and new appointees into the excesses of certain officials of the commission.

Today the PCGG has become a symbol of bad governance. It should not be replaced with another office, even if smaller, that could simply end up as the same dog with a different collar. An administration that stands for good government can do only one thing with the PCGG: abolish it.