Unintelligent funds

The Senate has 1.4 billion reasons to reclassify the entire government’s intelligence funds to make these expenditures compliant with auditing laws. As Sen. Franklin Drilon aptly puts it, these funds are prone to abuse and its usage has been under a permanent cloud of doubt.



Interestingly, the proposed intelligence fund for 2011 is more than three percent higher at P1.425 billion than this year’s, which was approved when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was president. To me, if the new government really wants to stamp out corruption, it should do away with these unintelligent expenditures and begin scrutinizing where these funds actually go.



Apart from the Office of the President, almost all departments including the uniformed services have their respective intelligence funds. The Commission on Audit (COA) has no power to scrutinize these monies. At the most, agencies merely “liquidate” expenditures that used the subject funds.



This is the root of the problem. Agency heads have nearly absolute control over these funds and not even any Juan dela Cruz can make the former account for these expenses. Poor boy.



I agree with Sen. Drilon when he broached the idea of “disintegrating” the bulk of these intelligence funds. An intelligent choice.



By doing so, funds which are not really used for intelligence purposes can be realigned to more intelligent endeavors such as building of more classrooms perhaps. If transparency is indeed the predominant tenet in this administration, then Drilon and his allies in congress are on the right track. That is, along President Noynoy Aquino’s “landas na matuwid.”

Malacanang’s pronouncements on the matter were quite reassuring. Officials there claimed the president was willing to forego his annual intelligence fund to save resources.

Secretary Herminio Coloma of the Presidential Communications Operations Office was quick to dismiss the funds as something they only “inherited” from the previous administration and that the system was already being reviewed.

Deemed not only as a source of corruption, most of the government’s intelligence funds are considered waste of public money.

Prior to Drilon’s outcry against these funds, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile had urged the president to give up his and allocate the money to other agencies. Enrile argued only government agencies involved in security should receive intelligence funds.

Take that from an intelligent former defense minister.