Twilight Zone

THE WORST part, if one looked at the bigger picture, isn’t even the reported P1 billion in government funds lost away through anomalous transactions and fraudulent paperwork. What is most galling is that it had to take the horrifying carnage known as the Ampatuan massacre for the Commission on Audit to finally summon the gumption to conduct a proper audit—its first—of the funds allocated to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. And that, as Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo pointed out, the government auditors tasked to conduct that standard bureaucratic function had to be accompanied by police and military security because “if not, the ARMM could not be audited.”

Nothing illustrates with more eloquent clarity the meltdown of Muslim Mindanao into a Twilight Zone of lawlessness, corruption and terror under the reign of the Ampatuan clan than this warped, vicious arrangement. Operating a lucrative fiefdom underwritten by the national treasury, Zaldy Ampatuan’s ARMM governorship then shielded its chicanery from normal governmental oversight not only through spurious documentation, but, more insidiously, through the employment of stark intimidation and violence.

Ampatuan was first elected as ARMM governor in 2005. The COA report that uncovered the unaccounted P1 billion expenditures covered only the period January 2008 to September 2009, the result of a special audit initiated after Ampatuan’s ouster from the governorship following his and his family’s implication in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre. Of the massive funds released to the ARMM, a region that includes some of the country’s poorest provinces (Maguindanao itself, the Ampatuans’ home base, ranking third on the list), hundreds of millions of pesos were found to have been disbursed with fake receipts and invoices, paid to non-existent suppliers, or spent on expenses the amounts of which beggared belief.

In one instance, P117,000 was spent on one meal alone by the governor’s office. Twelve members of Ampatuan’s travel retinue were also said to have filed P2 million in claims—and they were not even government employees. The total amount of travel expenses incurred, mostly by Ampatuan’s drivers and bodyguards, was a staggering P5.3 million. And for a local government unit established to keep its focus on Muslim Mindanao, the ARMM maintained a Manila office—in upscale Makati, to the tune of nearly P30 million from January 2008 to September 2009 alone, some P173,000 of that amount going to the monthly office rent.

This thoroughgoing thievery wasn’t, of course, the result of any special skill or talent on the part of Ampatuan. His high-flying career as overlord of that part of Mindanao came with the enthusiastic backing and strategic support of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who counted on the Ampatuan clan as a crucial political ally in the region. From GMA’s Malacañang came the billions that buttressed the power and influence of the sprawling clan, allowing it to build a private army, harass and eventually massacre political opponents, and engender the mind-boggling corruption in the ARMM governor’s mansion that is only now coming to light.

The way it handled hard cash indicated the level of confidence Ampatuan’s administration had in its never-ending bounty. According to the COA report, about P866.5 million in cash advances were given out, many times even with no stated purpose and in several big batches in one day. Not checks or paper guarantees, mind you, but cash—the bundles of money flowing out and simply disappearing into thin air.

In the wake of this report, filing plunder charges against Zaldy Ampatuan and his cohorts is the least the government can do. What cries out for a long-term solution is how to plug the enormous regulatory black hole in an autonomous local government unit such as the ARMM, so that funds allocated to it for the upliftment of the region are not squandered unchecked and unaccounted for through official misuse and corruption.

Ampatuan may be the guilty party now, but if the twisted set-up he so very successfully exploited is allowed to remain, it will spawn more of him. The rapacious mindset and culture that enabled his like need to be dismantled, beginning with the rigorous enforcement of rules on the proper use of public resources. Otherwise, in due time, P1 billion in plundered government money will prove to be the least of the nation’s losses.