HOURS after senators grilled anew the health secretary and issued arrest warrants for contempt on six persons summoned to a probe on pandemic fund use, President Duterte zeroed in anew on Blue Ribbon committee Chairman Sen. Richard Gordon, whom he called out for alleged lack of transparency in Philippine Red Cross matters.
In his public address late Tuesday, Duterte took another swipe at Gordon, concurrent PRC chairman, for the lawmaker’s alleged failure to comply with its mandate of regularly submitting PRC’s financial reports to the Executive department.
He demanded that the PRC submit its financial records so it could be scrutinized by state auditors.
Last week, Duterte first sought an audit by COA of Red Cross in an apparent bid to level the playing field—he defended Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and Chinese businessman Michael Yang, both dragged into the inquiry sparked by a COA report. Duterte was then sternly reminded by Gordon and critics that the Red Cross is a humanitarian organization, and like all Red Cross chapters around the world, is examined by reputable audit firms.
COA also said auditing the Red Cross was not part of its mandate.
On Tuesday night, however, Duterte was undaunted, saying, “I am going to ask for the copies of the audit so that we can go over it and compare it with the copies of the audit of COA [Commission on Audit].”
Duterte added, “Anyway under the law, it’s all public documents. We can dwell on it, delve on it, and find out if you have been faithful to your country and to your office.”
He maintained PRC is still subject to state audit since it gets funding from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor).
Malacañang earlier said it wants the President to know if the PRC is providing the mandated discounts in its Covid-19 testing.
Duterte started berating PRC since Gordon heads the Blue Ribbon Committee in the Senate, which is currently investigating the “deficiencies” flagged by COA in its 2020 report, notably DOH’s transfer, on Duque’s orders, of P42 billion of its funds to the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM), where it outsourced purchase of personal protective equipment.
The President said the resource persons from the Executive department, who were invited in Tuesday’s fourth hearing, were not properly treated by some senators.
Duterte particularly singled out Gordon for his alleged “adversarial” line of questioning, where he usually cut in whenever the invited source persons are explaining their position.