‘This whole brouhaha about confidential funds is revealing more than just the warped appreciation of our political class of what democracy and accountability mean.’
WHAT’S with our public servants? I get it that they’ve long ago forgotten what the term means, that it applies to them, and that they are not lords over the kingdom who come barging down our roads with police escorts who push us aside as they pass.
I get it that we are mere cannon fodder to their election campaigns, we whom they court so determinedly every three or six years and whom they lavish with promises and praise.
But when the deed is done? When we have voted them back into office? Forget “public service” and “public servant,” everyone from the lowly barangay kagawad all the way to the President of the Philippines put on the airs of being masters. Masters and rulers and the rest of us can “eat cake,” as that beheaded French queen commented about the protesting, hungry masses.
And no better symbol of this lording over the rest of us can be found than in that whole brouhaha about confidential funds — one that began reaching stratospheric proportions with the last president and continues to this day.
Not that Duterte started it; confidential or intelligence funds have been built into various office budgets for some time now –
from the Executive to the Legislative down to the local government units. Funds that are not subject to Commission on Audit scrutiny or accounting because they are confidential and for intelligence purposes.
But public funds that do not require to be accounted for can easily go elsewhere, yes?
Imagine a president with billions, or a legislator, or a mayor even, with hundreds of millions of confidential or intelligence funds every year. Every year. For the six years that a president is a president, 12 years that a senator is a senator or nine for a congressman or a mayor.
And they tell us that public service does not pay well?
How public funds are raised and spent is one of the best hallmarks of a properly governed democracy. Public servants are put in charge of the people’s money to spend for the benefit of the people, short term as well as long term. But here is a case where the public will never know how much of their money was spent — if spent at all.
Confidential nga, ang kulit!
And this is happening under our very noses and has been happening for years.
For years.
And we let it.
This whole brouhaha about confidential funds is revealing more than just the warped appreciation of our political class of what democracy and accountability mean. It also reveals a lot about why administration after administration, our politicians get away with it.
Because we the public are the servants — and who are servants to complain?