I am, as I have been immensely puzzled, by the saying that goes like this: “there are many ways to skin a cat”. Whoever coined it must have his own peculiar reason to do so. Unfortunately it escapes me. Why, in the first place, should one skin a cat? And, in the second place, why should it be a cat, and not any other animal? Well, I have long resigned to being unable to answer my questions.
Because that line can be applied to many situations, let me use it in relation to government funds. If the cat were the people’s money, there indeed are many ways to skin it, meaning, to steal it.
Not very long ago, I wrote about hundreds of very large culverts. Oh, they were so big that full-grown Filipinos could stand inside with much overhead clearance. Those materials must have been ordered fabricated and purchased by some high government functionary. But, instead of using the culverts in appropriate projects like perhaps, the drainage system, they were used as, of all possible undertakings, fence of a government property at the North Reclamation area. Let me emphasize that – hundreds of expensive culverts used as fence. What a brilliant government officer and what way to skin the cat that COA and Ombudsman cannot catch!
Still there are many other cats in our midst. Some stare right into our eyes, while others are well kept. Take for instance the barangay police outposts. They are erected on many city side streets eating up the sidewalks. Some are built of light materials of the size that can hardly accommodate four men inside while others are made of hollow blocks and unto their windows iron grills are attached and which are provided with sleeping quarters and electrical lights.
However they are constructed, we can observe that most of these so-called police outposts bear markings indicating the barangay to which they belong. Identifying them as such police outposts is a case of misrepresentation. Members of the Philippine National Police are never assigned (never were) to man them.
There are even names of barangay officials written on some structures as if the funds that were used to put them up came from the personal pockets of such officials. Blessed are the innocent of the law prohibiting such dirty and misguided kind of advertisement on government projects for they only could profess their innocence in the face of the dictum ignorantia legis neminem excusat.
Here is how to skin a cat. I notice that many of these barangay police outposts were only manned on the days when they were opened but not beyond. Yes, early on, tanods, they who are so probably enamored by the authority of being peace officers that they wear shirts with markings POLICE at their backs, were over eager to stay in those structures. The tanods were the police. Now they are gone. These outposts are empty. Others are taken over by ambulant vendors. Some have become the home of the wretched.
Empty police outposts are more than just eyesores that they are. At best, they evince the recklessness of officials to spend peoples’ money on wasteful projects. But, a keener investigation can yield the inescapable. There is no stronger physical evidence of corruption than useless structures, If not for the so called SOP, no one would care to build barangay police outposts that would only be left unattended. No doubt, the officials who initiated spending our money to put these “outposts” up only skinned the cat.
I am sure, at least, two offices of the government have jurisdiction to look into these useless expense - the Commission on Audits and the Office of the Ombudsman. So, I call upon them again. If they are to right a wrong done upon our citizenry, let them start with the officials of the lowermost political subdivision. Perhaps, if their bite cannot affect high-strung officials, they can somehow show to us that corruption can still be penalized.
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Email: avenpiramide@yahoo.com.ph