When the Commission on Audit released on 16 August 2013 CoA Special Audit Report 2012-13 on the Priority Development Assistance Fund for lawmakers, a senior CoA State Auditor V asked a member of the audit team, “Why was the report addressed to Secretary Florencio Abad of DBM and not to Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile?” 

“That was the decision of the Commission Proper as the quasi-judicial body,” came the answer of the audit team member.

“Is it not that for over a century now, it has always been the practice of CoA to address the audit report to the head of the agency audited?” the senior auditor asked again.

“Yes, we know that, but this one was the decision of the quasi-judicial Commission Proper,” replied the team member.

This decision of the Commission Proper as a quasi-judicial body, contrary to the duly mandated practice observed for over a century, as a fully established and respected tradition, uglified further the memory of the day of infamy.    

For the first time in the 114-year history of CoA, on 16 August 2013, the Commission Proper betrayed the public trust through a discourtesy at the highest level, adding insult to injury when it deviated from the mandated practice of addressing the Special Audit Report on the PDAF to the head of the agency audited, the Senate President, who is now the Chief Legal Counsel of the President, Juan Ponce Enrile, by addressing it to the DBM Secretary instead.

CoA addressed its audit report to the number-one violator of its auditing laws, rules, and regulations and author of National Budget Circular 541, issued on 18 July 2012, and budget issuances prepared by Florencio Abad and signed by President Noynoy Aquino which were declared invalid and illegal by the Supreme Court.

The CoA chairman and her commissioner had been accused by the political opposition of noticeably sparing the Aquino administration and its allies from the audit agency’s expose of anomalous PDAF expenditures.

On 8 October 2013, CoA chairperson Grace Pulido Tan told the Supreme Court that the CoA would no longer come up with a special audit report on the PDAF since this had already been integrated into the regular audit.

Keen political observers commented: “This means that she won’t be doing a special audit for 2010 to 2012 on the PDAF, which then ensures that the allies of President Aquino will be spared any investigation by either the Senate or by the Department of Justice, as the focus of the plunder cases against the non-allies of Aquino have been filed and were largely based on the CoA’s special audit report, which was moreover a skewed audit and not even nationwide in scope.”

CoA’s ethical blindness and introduction of political partisanship at the expense of the audit process and the reputation of both the audit staff and the institution, it’s undermining of basic and cherished principles of intellectual and professional values, and not arriving at or impeding the collegial body to achieve the highest standard of performance which its highly educated and trained workforce was capable of accomplishing, but instead to cover up and excuse the shortcomings of people allied with the administration and even in CoA of people of their choice were acts that comprised the public thrust by eroding public confidence in the proper exercise of the audit process.

Public office is premised on subservience by the public office holder to the Constitution and the maintenance of public trust. 

Having committed culpable violations of the Constitution and betrayed the public trust, the CoA chairman and her commissioner were unfit to hold their positions in the Commission on Audit.