EDITORIAL - Empowering the COA

At a recent Cabinet meeting on disaster preparedness, held in Ilocos Norte and attended by Gov. Imee Marcos, President Duterte reacted to a complaint she had expressed by telling government workers to ignore the Commission on Audit. Siding with Marcos, whose employees in the provincial capitol face graft charges for violating COA circulars in a project that she had approved, the President said the COA auditor for Ilocos Norte ought to be pushed down the stairs.

The country can only hope that the President was simply trying to amuse one of his original supporters with hyperbole. COA auditors are at the forefront of the effort to ensure compliance with laws and regulations on fiscal discipline in the utilization of people’s money. Any campaign against corruption cannot succeed without efficient auditing of public funds.

Auditing reports are crucial in securing the conviction of corrupt public officials. The courts may want to throw out individual testimonies, for example, in connection with the pork barrel scam. But this is not easily done if the testimonies about wrongdoing are backed by official documents provided by government auditors.

The President’s remarks drew a rebuke from former COA commissioner Heidi Mendoza, who is now undersecretary-general of the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services. Her selection for this post should be a source of pride for the country, but the President said she was in no position to give him a lecture.

The President can pick fights if he wants with individual COA members, in office or retired, but the agency itself needs the full support of the national leadership. If there are any weaknesses seen in carrying out its mandate, every effort must be made to correct the weaknesses instead of using them as excuses for undermining the work of a constitutional body.

The COA, for its part, should also be mindful of criticisms about its performance. COA personnel have been accused of looking the other way and colluding with crooks in government, especially when they have been assigned for a long time in one post and have made too many friends.

Congress can also review auditing laws to determine if these are contributing to red tape and can be simplified without weakening efforts to promote transparency and good governance. Lawmakers must rise above their self-interests and ensure that even the utilization of congressional funds will comply with auditing rules. Both the executive and legislative branches must work to empower rather than emasculate the COA.