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COA should do partial pre-audit not just
post-audit
[This was e-mailed on September 9
by the author to all the members of the Commission on Audit,
selected executive and legislative government officials and The
Times.]
Big-time corruption has thrived
in the government despite the existence of the 12,000-strong
constitutional Commission on Audit (COA). Former COA Commissioner
Bartolome C. Fernandez asked: “Is not the COA betraying the
trust of the people by its failure to stop or nip in the bud these
anomalous transactions?” in a letter to another newspaper.
The COA presented a rebuttal in
that newspaper. According to COA, it cannot be blamed for failure to
stop irregular government transactions because it is no longer on
pre-audit but on post audit basis since 1995, under COA Circular No.
95-006 issued pursuant to PD 1445, which placed fiscal
responsibility, including prevention of anomalies, on heads of
audited agencies. (Published also in COA News, Vol. 5, No.1, January
to March 2004, posted to COA website.)
Contrary to COA’s stand, it can
conduct pre-audit pursuant to the Constitution, which overrides PD
1445. Article IX, D, Section 2 of the Constitution empowers COA to
define the scope and method of its audit. It neither totally
prohibits pre-audit nor imposes 100 percent post audit. [The
Constitution says: “However, where the internal control system of
the audited agencies is inadequate, the Commission may adopt such
measures, including temporary or special pre-audit, as are necessary
and appropriate to correct the deficiencies.] It merely prescribes
PARTIAL post audit, applicable to a select group, consisting
principally of constitutional bodies, commissions, and offices that
have been granted fiscal autonomy under the Constitution. It does
not impose post audit for the rest of government agencies that have
NOT been granted fiscal autonomy, like the Departments of
Agriculture, National Defense, Public Works and Highways,
Transportation and Communication, Energy, etc. Moreover, under the
same section of the Constitution, COA can conduct special pre-audit
if the internal control system of audited agencies is weak, and it
is weak judging from rampant corruption reported by COA itself.
To conduct partial pre-audit, COA
need not go first to the Supreme Court to petition for the
declaration of the pre-audit prohibition under PD 1445 as
unconstitutional—because there is NO such plain, explicit, and
unequivocal PROHIBITION. If there is, let COA answer the question:
Where can you find that prohibition?
PD 1445 placed under agency
heads the primary responsibility over agency assets and funds. This
is OPERATIONAL responsibility—which goes without saying—not
AUDIT responsibility. This has been wittingly or unwittingly
MISINTERPRETED by COA officials as legal stumbling block to
pre-audit—so that in the absence of pre-audit, blame for
successfully perpetrated corruption will lie solely on agency heads,
none on COA. No wonder, there has been no public outcry against
COA’s failure to prevent continuing corruption in government.
However, whatever precautionary
steps agency heads are doing towards the prevention of anomalies
over government assets and funds under their custody and
responsibility cannot be considered AUDIT measures—because they
are the ones operationally overseeing and undertaking the
safekeeping and uses of said assets and funds. Therefore, what they
are doing cannot substitute for badly needed COA pre-audit and has
no bearing whatsoever on the needed kinds of audit that independent
COA auditors OUTSIDE of the government-agency organizations have to
undertake.
COA’s present 100 percent post
audit also cannot do away with the need for it to do selective
pre-audit. As COA’s total post audit is done AFTER payment or
consummation of all transactions, it is too late under post-audit to
detect and stop anomalous multi-million-peso contracts. Thus, it has
the disastrous disadvantage of failing to prevent multi-billion-peso
annual losses to the government from corruption.
To justify COA’s continued
pursuit of 100-percent post audit despite such staggering losses of
public funds, COA Commissioners should present to the public the
counterbalancing advantage of COA post audit that can more than
offset the disastrous disadvantage under it. If they cannot do so
because there is no such overriding advantage, then COA
Commissioners should stand accused of wrongdoing—or betraying the
trust of the people—by their insistence on pursuing 100 percent
post audit despite their full knowledge of its inability to stop
corruption. It is also a wrongdoing for them to refuse to conduct
partial pre-audit, despite their awareness that pre-audit will nip
anomalous transactions in the bud.
MARCELO L. TECSON
martecson@yahoo.com
Sports Institute must follow
German model
About “No money? Bad leaders?
What really ails RP sports?” and “PSC chief admits RP sports is
sick, needs Sports Institute” both published on September 7, 2008:
I congratulate you on running
these series of special reports.
But I am disappointed that
neither Mr. Rene Q. Bas nor Ms. Krista Angela Montealegre mentioned
in their articles Germany’s Sporthochschule or SpoHo. This was
introduced to your readers by your columnist Rony V. Diaz (Center of
Gravity, August 10, 2008). It is the world’s only higher education
institution devoted entirely to sports. It was established in 1947
while Germany was still struggling to recover from the devastation
of the Second World War. Today, it has 16 programs, 19 institutes
and 53 partnerships with other universities. Mr. Diaz suggests in
that column “that the PSC pattern a national sports
university—should one be considered for establishment—after the
German Sports University.”
Ruben V. Calip
rubenvcalip@yahoo.com
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