Fly now, pay never

Philippine Daily Inquirer

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Fly now, pay never. That seems to be the general attitude of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her cohorts when it came to spending for her many international and local trips. Upon assuming office, not only did Arroyo become the most well-traveled of our post-martial law presidents, but she did it pretty much at will, bringing along whoever wanted to tag along regardless of the financial consequences.

This first came to light in late 2010 after the Aquino administration took over. An Arroyo Malacañang document revealed that the Philippine government spent P2.852 billion just for Arroyo’s foreign journeys. In nine years of contested office, Arroyo traveled regularly, pretty much up to her last days in power. These frequent trips became the subject of criticism, though that apparently did not deter Arroyo from continuing to travel constantly, about 80 such trips in her time in office. For this, the Arroyo administration earned a reputation for being a government of spendthrifts.

The administration of President Aquino has made it a mission to go, as much as possible, in a different direction, and among the most obvious changes was the Aquino administration’s severe cutback in foreign trips as well as spending for those few state visits the President goes on. He’s trying to make every trip count; in the one year and three months he has been in office, he has only visited eight countries.

Now, the Senate finance committee has discovered that the Arroyo administration essentially issued itself a blank check when it came to globe-trotting. Sen. Franklin Drilon, chair of the Senate finance committee, said that in its last months in office, the Arroyo administration took massive cash advances to pay for the officials who accompanied Arroyo on her foreign visits.

According to a Commission on Audit report, the total unliquidated amount ran up to almost P1 billion, of which some P594 million was spent just for the 2009 trips. Add to that the recently discovered additional P367.3 million cash advances for other travels, and you have a staggering amount of cash that remains unaccounted for.

The reason? Apparently, nobody kept a list.

No, seriously. The Aquino administration has discovered that there is virtually no way of tracking down who took those cash advances because nobody kept track, says Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa. “However, it appeared when we were inquiring about this that there was no record at all (of) who were part of the delegation of the former president whenever she traveled abroad. There was no official list, so the members of the delegation only became known if they voluntarily paid or reimbursed the government for whatever expense they incurred during those travels,” Ochoa explained.

There was a bizarre arrangement for the trips where a distinction was made between “paying” members and “non-paying” members of the delegations. The “non-paying” members were those who were considered essential to the trip and did not have to pay. But additional officials who went with Arroyo had to take cash advances to pay for their trips, ostensibly to be paid by them later on, after the trips.

Those cash advances have proven to be most elusive to track down, so unless a miraculous document listing these free-loaders comes to light, those cash advances may never be liquidated, exposing yet another financial mess left behind by the Arroyo administration, an indicator of how the Arroyo administration spent money – especially when it was other people’s money, namely that of the Filipino people – with a sense of impunity.

Drilon noted that Arroyo spent P940.1 million for foreign and local trips in 2009, while the budget allocated by Congress for travel was only P244.6 million, yet another cash ceiling that the Arroyo administration broke without batting an eyelash. “That is the kind of impunity and abuse committed,” Drilon said. “There was absolutely no respect for the appropriation authorized by Congress. They just disregarded (it) and just spent whatever amount they felt was needed.”

Though Arroyo and her cronies are no longer in office, they must be held accountable for their profligate actions. It is high time to identify these shameless jetsetters and bring them back to earth.