President Rodrigo Duterte is practically corrupting the Commission on Audit (COA) when he told them to reconfigure its audit reports on government agencies by stating there is no corruption from the onset of its commentary, opposition Senator Leila de Lima said on Monday, August 23.
“Instead of ordering his Cabinet secretaries to shape up their agencies to assure COA that the people’s money is not being misspent, wasted or stolen, Duterte would rather corrupt the COA itself,” De Lima said in a statement.
“Duterte wants COA to “reconfigure” its report. Whatever dictionary he is using, that word does not bode well for COA. In the first place, never in the history of the post-EDSA Republic did a President even dare to tell COA what to do. But that is only because past Presidents, even Gloria Arroyo, knew their limits and had shame,” she also said.
“Duterte does not. He has no qualms destroying institutions and taking the country down with him,” she added.
In a speech last Saturday, Duterte suggested to the COA to “reconfigure” their reports by stating that there is “no corruption” involved as it would taint government agencies with “corruption with perception.”
This comes after the President told COA to stop flagging government transactions and publishing its report. COA earned the ire of the chief executive after it released its 2020 annual report on the deficiencies they found on the Department of Health (DOH) P67.3-billion fund for its COVID-19 response.
De Lima said she cannot stomach the fact the ones responsible have the nerve to tell what COA should do despite their mandate as an independent institution.
“Kung hindi ka ba naman mapapamura, sila na nga ang magnanakaw, sila pa ang makapal na magsasabi sa COA na hayaan lang silang magnakaw (You’d really curse. They are the ones stealing and yet they have the gall to tell COA to just allow them to steal),” said the lawmaker, a known vocal critic of the Duterte administration.
“It looks like the Filipino people really have to pray hard for all this shameful, self-centered and messy governance to end soon. I know Duterte only has 10 months left in office. But the Filipino people might not have that much time to survive him,” the senator said.
“Let us pray. Let us pray for this curse that has befallen our country to be lifted while we still have the chance to save our land,” De Lima further said.