MIRIAM SEEKS PROBE OF PORK IMPLEMENTORS

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago said she is filing a resolution for the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to expand its current pork barrel probe into the culpability of the implementing agencies listed in the 2013 and prior budgets.

Santiago said that the heads of certain implementing agencies such as the Technology Research Center (TRC), National Agribusiness Corporation (NABCOR), and Muslim Youth Foundation are "equally guilty" with the lawmakers in committing the crime of plunder or malversation of pork barrel funds."

"The implementing agencies should never have allowed the corrupt politicians to exert pressure in favor of certain NGOs, who are supposed to have their own funds from nongovernmental sources," the senator said.

Santiago said that NGOs should source their funds, not from the pork barrel, but from international donors, international financing institutions, corporate donors, etc.

"At present, there appears to be no government agency that monitors the flow of public funds to hundreds of NGOs, legitimate or illegitimate. They could be political NGOs, quasi-NGOs (QUANGOs), NGOs run by socialites, or NGOs run by wives of public tycoons," she said.

Santiago said that implementing agencies are not even created by Congress and instead, many are subsidiary corporations of existing departments or government-owned corporations.

"These implementing agencies were created by mere administrative orders or created through the Securities and Exchange Commission," the senator said.

Santiago quoted former budget secretary Benjamin Diokno, who has said that "the proliferation of implementing agencies is highly anomalous, because some of them received more funds than the legitimately created agencies of government."

The senator also said that as a member of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, she will help to establish the criminal liability of the past and present executive officials of the implementing agencies.

She said that after criminal liability has been shown, the government should recover the misappropriated funds.

"A the end of this process, we should throw into jail the guilty heads of implementing agencies," the senator said.

Santiago said that NGOs were "able to capture" either the Senate, or the conference committee on the budget, which is drawn from the two chambers of Congress.

She said that in the past before funds could be released to a government agency, the COA required the agency to make a full liquidation of public funds.

But the senator noted that in the last year's budget the requirement of full liquidation was reduced to merely 70% of the funds

"Who inserted this corrupt provision of the liquidation to only 70% of the funds? This provision was the key to corruption," Santiago said.

Santiago was graduation speaker of the West Visayas State University in her hometown of Iloilo, and addressed a crowd of some 3,000 graduates and their families.