Stories.

WHEN it conducted its special audit on the disbursement of pork in 2007-2009, part of the methodology that the Commission on Audit (COA) employed was to confirm the authenticity of…

PCIJ SENT 20 legislators implicated in the alleged corruption of pork funds separate letters requesting for comments. Only three responded in writing, a fourth had his chief of…

AS THINGS stand, it looks like the ruling coalition led by the Liberal Party (LP) of President Benigno S. Aquino III has more members implicated in the pork-barrel scandal than…

On Sept. 11, 2013, a day after the Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on all PDAF spending, Binay announced that he had decided to remove pork from the OVP budget.

“KAHINDIK-HINDIK” or horrible in English, was how then Commission on Audit (COA) Chairperson Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan described the corruption in pork that her team of 18 COA…

CORRUPTION, an apparent eternal scourge of Philippine government and politics, is firmly entrenched in many public agencies.

FILIPINOS CHOOSE the people who will run their government through elections. Yet they do not hold the power to choose who will run the elections. That authority rests on the…

HE WOULD have long left his post at the Commission on Elections by the time Filipinos cast their ballots in the 2016 elections. But chances are some of Sixto S. Brillantes Jr.’s…

BEING CHIEF bean counter may not sound that impressive, and the probability of going against countless politicians could be daunting. Yet the job of leading the 9,000 personnel…

SHE IS the first female head of the Commission on Audit, but that will not be the only distinction Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan will be remembered for after her term of office lapses…

THE PHILIPPINES has had seven chairpersons for the Commission on Audit (COA) since 1986. Yet while they have wound up being named respondents in court cases, most of these…

A SILENT EMERGENCY is unfolding, a portent of a likely crisis of integrity should President Benigno S. Aquino III fail to act swiftly and well: Four Constitutional Commissions with…

AS DONATIONS continue to pour in from both local and foreign individuals and institutions for post-Yolanda recovery and rehabilitation efforts, the Philippine government has also…

RIGHT AFTER calamities have ravaged homes and communities, the government mounts relief and rescue work with speed and vigor – and still has energy left to provide photo-op events…

EXACTLY THREE months after Yolanda struck central Philippines, the government launched a worldwide campaign to thank everyone who had rushed to the country’s aid in the…

A FEW weeks after Super Typhoon Yolanda rampaged through Eastern Visayas in early November 2013, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) found itself caught in a…

DISASTERS USUALLY bring people together, but a few weeks after Yolanda, a video that seemed to highlight a political divide amid tragedy went viral.

WHEN IT became evident that Typhoon Ruby was going to slam through central Philippines in December last year, many began wondering what would happen to the thousands who were still…

FOR SOMEONE just hearing the stories, they sound like episode after episode of the “Walking Dead” TV series. But what Jermaine Bayas and other aid workers witnessed in Tacloban in…

THERE ARE clear winners, as there are clear losers, in terms of provinces and congressional districts and project types, in the distribution of over P11 billion in tax money under…

NO LESS than the home province of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio ‘Butch’ B. Abad, head of the architect agency of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), received…