The Piattos audit

You have to wonder what they were snacking on when they filled out those liquidation forms.

It takes a special kind of hubris to burn through PHP 125 million in exactly eleven days and then try to justify it with a grocery list. But here we are. According to the ongoing impeachment trial, the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education handed out your taxes to “Mary Grace Piattos,” who pocketed PHP 70,000. “Ralph Joseph Bacon” walked away with PHP 150,000. “Matthew N Keso” took home PHP 250,000.

They didn’t even try to invent convincing phantoms, which is a breathtaking display of impunity. The perpetrators wrote down convenience store junk food because they were absolutely certain nobody would ever dare check the receipts. It channels a raw, specific public outrage, highlighting the profound contempt shown for the Filipino taxpayer. This is not a mere bureaucratic violation — it is a direct, mocking insult to every working-class citizen bleeding under the weight of inflation and poor public infrastructure.

And they were almost right.

When asked why the Commission on Audit didn’t immediately flag these cartoonish aliases, auditor Xylene Mae del Campo gave an answer that should enrage us all. The COA assumed regularity. Why? Because the Special Disbursing Officers swore an oath that the money was used for confidential operations.

If swearing an oath is the only firewall protecting public coffers, then the taxpayer’s money is entirely defenseless. An oath cannot be a blindfold. The “presumption of regularity” was designed to keep the wheels of government turning, not to serve as an institutional excuse for gross negligence. As Senator Bam Aquino rightly pointed out, auditing rules require acknowledgment receipts to strictly correspond to real, verifiable individuals. A system that protects the official signing the paper — rather than the public funding the budget — is a system designed to fail us.

But this outrage cannot stop at the OVP or DepEd. The Piattos-Bacon-Keso triad exposes the structural black hole that is the civilian confidential fund. As long as “confidential” practically translates to “unverifiable,” any administration will continue to treat public money as a personal slush fund. And if you think this is only happening in the national capital, look closer to home. Local government units — mayors and governors from Luzon down to our municipalities in the Visayas — sit on billions in local intelligence and confidential funds. Without an uncompromising audit mechanism, LGU coffers are completely vulnerable to the exact same brazen phantom disbursements. The problem goes beyond the individuals involved, as it goes back to the existence of the fund mechanism itself.

This brings us to the real trial. Yes, the Vice President is the one answering to the impeachment court, but COA is standing right beside her on the docket. This unprecedented fraud audit is a do-or-die moment for the commission’s credibility.

The public is waiting to see if COA can finally overcome its institutional timidity and act as the genuine constitutional watchdog it was built to be.