COA chief horrified, but won’t recommend PDAF abolition

MANILA, Philippines - While she finds “kahindik-hindik” or horrifying the misuse of the congressional pork barrel, Commission on Audit (COA) Chairman Ma. Gracia Pulido-Tan is not in favor of abolishing the allocations for the projects of senators and congressmen.

Though saddened by the mess, she said she did not believe the pork barrel or Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) should be scrapped.

She told reporters in a press briefing yesterday after releasing details on COA’s pork barrel fund probe that the decision of whether the pork barrel should be scrapped belongs to Congress.

Tan emphasized that the COA has limitations, such as to recommend investigations to the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

She said the COA cannot recommend the suspension of the PDAF system but rather ask “everyone to please follow the rules.”

“Following the rules emanates from them. It starts from the legislators themselves,” Tan explained, hoping that the COA report – which she referred to as a “report to the Filipino people” – will result in positive changes.

Expressing her dismay, Tan noted that if Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle cried, she wailed when she found out how billions of pesos in pork barrel funds were anomalously disbursed and misused from 2007 to 2009.

“Most of the NGOs were being managed or owned by the same persons,” Tan told reporters, baring the results of COA’s special audit of the PDAF releases from 2007 to 2009.

But what appalled her, she said, was how the list of beneficiaries for some pork barrel-financed projects was manufactured and taken from the list of board and bar passers.

She bared that state auditors likewise uncovered after a three-year probe how some P123 million in public funds were used by some NGOs for payment of salaries and other administrative expenses.

“The people were paying the salaries of their employees,” Tan said, reporting that COA’s investigation unmasked some 82 dubious NGOs, which received P6.156 billion in PDAF from 2007 to 2009, including 10 groups linked to JLN Corp. of businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles that took in P2.157 billion during the same period.

She noted that there were six NGOs whose incorporators included relatives of some sponsoring lawmakers.