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| Image courtesy of Inquirer. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/files/2013/07/cartoon_Jul19.jpg. |
“One noticeable feature of modern legal systems
is the extent to which power is conferred upon government officials and
agencies to be exercised at their discretion, according to policy
considerations, rather than according to precise legal standards.” (Galligan, 1990)
The past month, after the Priority Development Assistance
Fund scandal surfaced in Philippine political debate, considerable media space
has been allotted to discuss the value, or conversely and more strongly, the evil
of the PDAF. A congressional inquiry is
currently being conducted, purportedly in aid of legislation that oftentimes
seemed like some person’s show. A whistleblower seemed to
enjoy the media attention with a kind of sinister smile, sounding like saying “come
on; do not act as if you do not know this.” A senator
accused of plunder chastised himself by saying nothing else is good in this
government and that should be enough evidence to not point fingers at them. The
PDAF events, occurring at different locations – in court, in the legislative
chambers, in the streets, in the minds of people – seem like a Shakespearian
comedy, that watching, or living within the plot of misfortune, one cannot help
but burst into a dry laugh.
Several of our top academics and intellectuals lend very
insightful comments to this spectacle. A scholar I came to know at one point in
one of my out-of-country conference trips, and one of those I consider very
politically astute but pragmatically optimist at the same time, Ronald
Mendoza, argued that PDAF kills our democracy. He said that “Pork
fuels our democracy’s vicious cycle—of poor people who depend on it for help,
and politicians who ingratiate themselves to less informed voters and
strengthen their stranglehold on power by disbursing it with little
accountability.” Randy David, on
the other hand, said that “pork is never good in a political system dominated
by insatiable swines”. Solita Monsod analysing the statements of
P-noy’s statements argued that “ P-Noy actually
starts by affirming that “there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this
policy,” and that enabling our representatives to identify projects for their
communities that otherwise were not affordable was a “worthy goal.”
In the background of these arguments is a word that is highly
objectionable, not only in politics, but in business as well - DISCRETION. Giving one person with a large responsibility
too much discretion is giving him so much power. In the literature on internal control, it is
argued that you have to segregate duties in the use and administration of
funds. When I was teaching auditing at Holy Name University, I used the
mnemonic word CARE,
to emphasize how CARE of business funds should be exercised, and this applies
more importantly to public funds as well. In an ideal scenario, no one person
or entity should be given the power to be the Custodian of resources, to Authorise
its use, to Record the transactions involving its utilisation, and to Execute the
utilisation of resources all at the same time (though later on, they removed Execution
in the standards, I still argue for its inclusion as part of the four
incompatible functions). In the case of
PDAF, a merger of around two incompatible functions became deadly – legislators
Authorise the budget, and later has the authority to how to Execute it. When
not scrutinize, and when hidden behind names of bogus projects and
self-commissioned non-government organizations, he can spend public funds on
himself.
The PDAF case is not only about a violation of internal
control policies (or an override of it). It is also a classic case of what Galligan
highlighted as a government where leaders exercise power at their
discretion. It is also a case of breach
of legislative powers on executive functions, though how nicely its
political language is framed to avoid this description. One cannot argue that PDAF is consequentially
good, because it is inherently wrong.
So while activists are barking at national legislators to
give up their pork, I was pre-occupied with the question whether the same kind
of discretion is given to local legislators.
In the last couple of months, I reviewed, as part of my
research work, the municipal and provincial budgets of around 20 local government
units across the country. There are a
few budget account titles that caught my attention and these were normally
labelled with fancy names like the ones I enumerate below:
- Assistance to barangays
- Assistance to non-government organizations
- Assistance to municipalities
- Assistance to cooperatives
- Donations
I looked at the process of how these were used. Apparently, this
general-sounding budget figure is ‘allocated’ to provincial or municipal legislators,
who request the amount in the same way that senators and congressmen do. It is like your PDAF, in its more down-scaled
version, and in the context of the local, but nevertheless advances the same
clientelistic political effect of the national pork, and can also be a subject
of abuse.
So I would like to call local activists to look at the local
budgets. Look for terms (a) to (e)
above. Ask government officials how this is disbursed. If you are concerned of issues in the
national level, you should also be asking questions on issues closer to home.
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