Aiming for accountability

 

AS the investigations against corruption evolves at the national level, driven by widespread public fury over the P10-billion pork barrel controversy, the town of Binmaley has taken its own small battle a step further by putting on preventive suspension two top-ranking municipal employees – the municipal accountant and the budget officer – charged with administrative cases of “dishonesty and neglect of duty” over suspiciously spent funds. Now that is concrete action on accountability. It waits to be seen whether Dagupan City, with a bigger proportion of misused and unaccounted funds, will make a similar move – and how soon.

The Commission on Audit (COA) has released, through a series of memorandums to Dagupan Mayor Belen Fernandez, a fairly detailed accounting of million of pesos of city funds over the past several years under the Lim administration that are irregular, i.e. unliquidated, misappropriated, or lacking in necessary supporting documents, not to mention collections that were never remitted to the city’s account. The list of people involved will expectedly be long and ensuring that they will be made accountable will require the participation and cooperation of the whole city government as well as the public.

Unlike in Binmaley where Mayor Simplicio Rosario is dealing with a relatively simple case of gasoline and other various funds that seem to have vanished from the town coffer, Dagupan is facing its own version of a Napoles scam – and more. The evidence is out and COA officials have recommended the filing of charges against those responsible. Can Dagupan prove itself to be the Philippine’s model city for accountability?

 

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Oblique shot

 

BECAUSE President Aquino cast doubt on the integrity of the National Bureau of Investigation, the agency’s Director Nonnatus Rojas resigned.  The resignation, coming on the heels of Aquino’s revelation that two NBI agents could be in cahoots with suspected scammer Janet Lim-Napoles, was irrevocable, which, strictly speaking, means Rojas cannot reconsider it.  Almost immediately, Rojas was hailed a hero by a public long hungering, hunting, for a patriot.  Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, Rojas’s immediate superior, said she had sent Mr. Aquino a letter asking him “wholeheartedly, firmly and unequivocally” not to accept the resignation.  De Lima also said: “I don’t want to lose a good man.”

Well said, Madame.  But if Rojas would reconsider, it could only mean he’s got no balls.  He was all merely for show.  No fury.

Let us let Rojas go to send one rare and heart-rending signal to government factotums:  That there are still a few good men left.

What Rojas actually did, too, was an oblique shot at Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon, who did not resign after Mr. Aquino called Biazon’s turf as filled with “thick-faced people” (literally translated from the Filipino makakapal ang mukha).

gHzere’s to a class act.

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