Friday, July 27, 2007 Seares: ‘Losing to graft’ By Pachico A. Seares News Sense
GERARDO Aquino Jr., medical chief of Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC), doesn't think money was lost by the hospital.
A Sun.Star story of July 24, banner-headlined "P100 million lost to graft," said COA found irregularities in purchases and management decisions that cost a lot of money.
Aquino doesn't think so. "There was no such thing as losing to graft," he said.
This is the chief defending the acts of the agency head whom he succeeded. Having assumed only in December last year, he couldn't be responsible for what happened in the first 11 months of 2006.
Aquino said that no cash was involved. What was lost was projected income. Let government auditors and lawyers argue with that.
What must interest people though is that he thinks graft can be committed only if the official or employee pockets the money.
Is that the reason he had kept quiet about the COA report of the mess in his hospital and had already been making reforms "when, pak, came the headline"?
Dishonesty
Aquino needs to adjust his belief about graft. Sofronio B. Ursal, in his lucid "Anti-Graft Guidebook," stresses that not all acts of graft are products of dishonesty.
Management error such as buying white bed sheets instead of having them made by hospital seamstresses can be graft. And the P250,000 or so the hospital could have saved was real, not a projection.
Many of us think that graft, to qualify as a crime, must give the public official private gain. Not always.
Basic is waste or loss of resources caused by the offender's deed or omission. No need to trace where the money went.
