Perks of power

One non-government organization submitted the same list of funding beneficiaries to implementing agencies. Names on a list of this NGO were lifted from published lists of those who passed the bar exams and other professional licensure tests.

This is just one of the striking items in the voluminous Commission on Audit (COA) report on the utilization of the congressional pork barrel from 2007 to 2009.

Filipinos are used to brazenness in the misuse of public funds, but reading about it in documented detail can still be a jarring experience.

Reading the report, or even skimming through the 24-page executive summary, takes you to the root of the problem: regulatory failure.

This in turn can be traced to a deeper problem, which is only implied in the COA report: the weakness or absence of regulatory will is due to fear of political power. Janet Lim-Napoles profited as facilitator.

Everyone simply looked the other way as lawmakers earmarked at whim projects or programs for implementation and picked the contractors or recipient NGOs. Implementing agencies did not bother to conduct due diligence on the NGOs or closely monitor the implementation of projects and programs. Records of fund releases and procurements were not kept.

The COA report showed that six NGOs were incorporated by lawmakers themselves or their relatives. The only thing surprising about this is that there were only six.

Even if the implementing agencies knew about this anomalous setup, it’s doubtful that they would have stopped the NGOs from being the beneficiaries of the lawmakers’ pork barrel or Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

Certain officials in some of the top implementing agencies have grumbled in the past that if they protested about such anomalies, lawmakers would threaten to drastically slash an agency’s budget or give the officials a tough time during budget deliberations.

Lawmakers would also threaten to dredge up old controversies in the agency. Even if its incumbent leadership may not be involved, an agency can see its operations badly affected by a congressional investigation.

It’s just too much trouble to make a fuss, and so much easier to look the other way, to live and let live. In the face of wrongdoing, a common argument in the civil service is: everyone is doing it; you think anything will change if you raise a fuss? You actually think you can make a difference?

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The same fear of the influential political elite permeates other sectors of Philippine society.

Traffic cops, for example, are reluctant to pull over violators in luxury vehicles, worried that they could run into politicians or their relatives and end up being scolded. For vehicles with what look like back-up cars, many traffic cops don’t even bother pretending to pull over violators. Yes, P-Noy, the wang-wang culture persists, without the actual sirens.

The PDAF mess, although unveiled by the COA, also indicates failure on the part of its resident auditors. Either the auditors feared the endorsing politicians or received a share of the PDAF largesse themselves. This was allegedly the case in the fund diversion scandal involving generals in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, wherein the resident auditor was accused of connivance.

When “ghost” or shell NGOs receive billions in public funds, it is also a failure of the agency that is supposed to vet them. In this case, according to reports, the one directly in charge is the Department of Social Welfare and Development, whose personnel are supposed to conduct an ocular inspection of the office address listed by each NGO.

The explanations given to the COA by some of the implementing agencies are revealing. The agencies’ intervention in livelihood projects “tended to be” recommendatory or merely meant to facilitate fund transfers, according to the COA report, since the projects and NGOs were endorsed by the sponsoring lawmakers.

One implementing agency, the National Livelihood Development Corp., “fully relied” on Congress to supervise and monitor project implementation. The NLDC did try to verify the existence of certain NGOs and initially hesitated to implement PDAF-funded projects because this was not part of its mandate, which is to extend credit for microenterprises.

The Technology Resource Center explained that because it didn’t have enough staff for validation, it simply required NGOs to present original receipts for fund utilization.

Local government units (LGUs), for their part, washed their hands of the mess, saying they merely served as initial depositories and conduits for fund transfers or financial aid endorsed by lawmakers. Barangay officials claimed they did not handle the funds.

Told that the PDAF could not be used for anything outside the menu of programs under the annual General Appropriations Act, the reaction of LGUs was: “Duh.”

Procurements were not posted on any government website because the LGUs’ IT section came on stream only at the end of 2009.

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Although horrified by the mess, the COA chief is not recommending the abolition of the pork barrel. This is in keeping with the thinking of P-Noy, whose mom planted the seeds of what is now the PDAF in 1989.

Instead the special COA report presents a lengthy list of recommendations to improve the pork barrel system, while leaving it to the Office of the Ombudsman and government prosecutors to determine criminal liability in the atrocious misuse of people’s money.

There’s a set of recommendations for lawmakers. Will they go along? It means giving up certain entitlements and opportunities for huge amounts of personal profit. These perks are the building blocks of many family fortunes in this country. Let’s see who will readily say goodbye to all that.