To The Quick

Song and danceI have no problem with the Commission on Audit sending notices to four senators - Bong Revilla, Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and Gringo Honasan - to return the millions of pesos it said these senators diverted from their pork barrel to bogus NGOs.

In fact, if it really has the goods on these senators, the COA should not only send notices for them to return the money to the government, it should slap these senators silly with every applicable charge it finds in the books.

And while the COA is at it, it should also slap silly each and every legislator who similarly did what it alleges the four had done. After all, that is precisely what it boasted when first it went after the four -- that it had the goods on so many others. Just wait and see, it said, or something to that effect.

But months have passed, and the COA has not gone after any of these others, shoring up initial suspicions that the agency has lent itself to the grand witchhunt hatched by Malacañang against its enemies, especially now that the 2016 elections are nearing.

Revilla and Estrada are reported to be angling for very high positions while Enrile and Honasan are known to be great tacticians who can help Revilla and Estrada map winning strategies, as well as influence the outcome of the polls from their own bases of support.

That the COA is part of Malacañang's scheme is rendered apparent not only by its own actions and omissions (until now it has failed to go after anyone else except the four aforementioned prominent members of the opposition) but by Malacañang's own inadvertent lapses.

A classic example of one such lapse is that right after the COA sent the notices to Revilla, Enrile, Estrada and Honasan, Malacañang promptly issued a statement saying it has nothing to do with those notices, that it was keeping its hands off a constitutional body like the COA.

Why Malacañang felt compelled to issue the disclaimer, I don't know. It is not as if somebody actually asked. Maybe Malacañang was simply prodded by a guilty conscience. On the other hand, why claim to keep its hands off when meddling in the functions and independence of others has been the hallmark it is known for.

Malacañang has the House of Representatives and about half the Senate dancing and eating from the palm of its hand. And it has tried, unsuccessfully so far, to push its weight against, and have its way with, the Supreme Court.

As to the COA, it is known to be headed by one of the three women Noynoy Aquino uses as his attack dogs. So, when Malacañang issued the disclaimer that it had nothing to do with COA and its actions, you can be sure it had everything to do with those actions.

Malacañang's allies fondly call these women women with balls. Maybe, maybe not. It would have been easier to know the truth, though, if these women had not been Aquino appointees. We would have known if these women truly had balls if they did not have the backing of the most powerful man in the republic.

That Revilla, Enrile, Estrada and Honasan may have tinkered with their pork barrel is not surprising. In this country, the big surprise would have been if they didn't. If opportunities are rife for even the rank and file to make a quick buck, as when a fixer facilitates a transaction, how much more for the well-placed?

Everybody knows it is so easy to make hay in government, so that in one way or another, in amounts swinging wildly from one end to the other depending on the opportunity and the level of prominence, almost everyone must have had his day.

Yet why are only very few selected to bear the burden for all? When stealing is so commonplace, it becomes a bigger crime to be selective in the prosecution. That is why I have this problem with the COA notices in particular, and in the hypocrisy of the Noynoy Aquino "daang matuwid" campaign in general.