EDITORIAL - Looking back

Here’s another reason why moving on and forgetting the past is bad for the health of this country: P1 billion spent by a single government agency for coffee. At Starbucks rates, that’s about 10 million cups of coffee, by the calculation of President Aquino, who couldn’t resist mentioning the expenditure in his recent State of the Nation Address.

The people behind that expenditure at the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., the President said, must still be wide awake until now from all the caffeine. PAGCOR defenders insist that the deal was aboveboard. The coffee was provided by a single company, which won a supply contract without public bidding. This much was admitted by the company’s owner, Carlota Cristi Manalo-Tan, who defended the supply contract and reportedly noted that as far as she knew, none of PAGCOR’s service providers in the past went through a bidding process.

The Senate is reportedly preparing to investigate the issue. This will add to the woes of former PAGCOR chairman Efraim Genuino, who already faces plunder charges together with his friend who happens to be the coffee supplier’s husband, Johnny Tan. Manalo-Tan said her husband had nothing to do with the coffee supply firm, Promolabels Specialty Shop, which was registered in the same year that it bagged the coffee contract with PAGCOR, in 2001.

A thorough investigation will show if the deal was indeed aboveboard. You don’t move forward and forget questionable deals without risking their recurrence. For too long the nation has failed to make government officials account to the public for abuse of their positions and misuse of taxpayers’ money. This failure has bred impunity and a culture of corruption that has permeated much of the bureaucracy, from agency heads down to the lowest ranking clerk.

Digging up anomalies in previous administrations will not guarantee that everyone in the Aquino administration will be clean. But seeing former officials being indicted and made to account for past actions should make incumbent officials hesitate before betraying the public trust. Not everyone will be caught, but pursuing cases backed by supporting documents will be a good start. Those who keep moving forward without ever looking back could find all the problems of the past returning and becoming problems of the present.