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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Editorial: COA report on Bogo: Is it all politics?
A politician against whom charges of possible malfeasance are filed usually alleges ill motive of the accuser. And the usual whipping boy is politics.
The Commission on Audit (COA), in its 2004 report on the Municipality of Bogo, said Northern Cebu Development Center, Inc. (NCDCI), which received P12 million from the pork barrel of Rep. Clavel Asas-Martinez, still had to liquidate the amount and COA still had to determine whether it received the money and used it properly.
How does it affect the congresswoman? She was one of the incorporators when it applied for registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1995. While it is claimed that she is no longer with NCDCI, the new list of people in the organization still has to be submitted with the SEC.
Besides, it's her pork barrel that is questioned.
Unless COA just made up its finding, the watchdog office appears to be only doing its job.
Besides, the COA is not yet passing judgment. It merely cites failure of NCDCI to account and the claim of a member group, Don Pedro Multipurpose Cooperative, that it did not receive the P1 million listed by COA as aid to it.
Still, the Martinezes smell politics. The congresswoman is being made to account only now, after she defected from President Arroyo to the opposition and voted for impeachment and pushed for her removal.
Is the President using her power to hit back at Mrs. Martinez, a once favorite crony? We don't know. It's not beneath the President, however, considering how adept she has been in using her office to get elected and survive the assault on her tenure.
Yet, to its credit, COA generally has kept its head above dirty waters of politics. Earlier, COA's report exposed "unauthorized" contracts of Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia and rapped the now fierce Arroyo defender for not submitting contracts to the Provincial Board.
If indeed politics has opened a can of worms in the Bogo case, it
won't hurt, it will benefit, public interest. If the can turns out to be empty, it will settle the issue.
What must be remembered is that NCDCI was entrusted with public funds.
The least it can do is to account for it. The least Mrs. Martinez can do is to clarify the use of her pork barrel.
Letting the issue hang will keep doubts and the innuendos.
It will also reinforce public skepticism over the wisdom of entrusting control over government funds to legislators.
(September 28, 2005 issue)
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