EDITORIAL - Wanted: Mary Grace Piattos

For a woman whose signature appears on acknowledgment receipts covering tens of millions in public funds used by the Office of the Vice President, no one in the OVP seems to know who Mary Grace Piattos is. Or is it Mary Grace Piatty?

Her full name is scrawled on more than 1,200 acknowledgment receipts deemed deficient by the Commission on Audit. The ARs justify the OVP’s disbursement of P125 million in confidential funds under Sara Duterte.  The COA said the amounts in the ARs were part of the P73 million that it had disallowed in the OVP’s confidential funds for 2022.

Apart from bearing apparently spurious signatures, the ARs for 2022 were dated December 2023 – a slip that the OVP reportedly described to the COA as clerical errors. The COA said 787 of the ARs had unnamed signatories while 302 bore unintelligible names.

Other documents covering confidential funds, which were submitted to the COA by the OVP and the Department of Education when it was headed by Duterte, also bore names like “Nova,” “Oishi” and “Tempura.” Perhaps the person who scribbled the names was noshing on packaged snacks and Mary Grace pastries while affixing the signatures.

And perhaps the person, or persons, never imagined that the documents submitted to state auditors would be subjected to minute scrutiny at a congressional public hearing. Unable to get hold of Mary Grace Piattos, the good government and public accountability committee of the House of Representatives announced on Nov. 18 a reward of P1 million for anyone who could provide information on the mysterious signatory, including whether the person is real.

The information should be easily obtained from the source of the ARs itself, the OVP, but the office has stonewalled both the House and the Senate. This may stem from the belief that confidential means secret, and secret means blanket authority to use people’s money in any way the agency pleases. The House panel found that the DepEd under Duterte also used certifications from military officials without their knowledge to explain the disbursement of P15 million in secret funds supposedly to pay informants in 2023.

How widespread are these practices? The abuses being unearthed in the congressional inquiry into the utilization of confidential and intelligence funds should lead to legislation and tighter rules in giving civilian agencies supervision with little accountability over massive amounts of people’s money. Authorities must also ensure that the congressional probe will lead to criminal indictments. If the probes are seen by the public as nothing but political bluster and hot air, it will guarantee the perpetuation of the abuses.