DAVAO CITY (MindaNews/12 June) — Local Governments Secretary Jesse Robredo has warned anew that government would file charges against local government executives who fail to comply with the policy on full disclosure of their procurement and other transactions.
“That means that all local governments should produce the documents to support their procurement. We will file charges if they do not comply,” Robredo told a forum on Transparency, Accountability and Good Local Governance at the Pinnacle Hotel here last week.
Robredo issued the warning again after the mayor of BanayBanay town, Davao Oriental asked what happened to the Moral Recovery Program, an anti-corruption crusade of the previous administrations.
“The moral recovery program was a good advocacy but the problem with it was its lack of programs that were measureable to tell us that it was succeeding or not,” he said. “Ours now is more concrete and it is a law, while the moral recovery program was an advocacy.”
He said in a budget tracking conference in Cebu last month that the government policy on full disclosure is mandated in the Constitution and the Local Government Code, and urged nongovernment organizations to file charges against local government officials if they defy that.
He also denied a request of a vice mayor within the Davao region that all vice mayors be alloted discretionary funds.
The Moral Recovery Program was mandated by Presidential Proclamation No. 62 issued on September 30, 1992 “in response to the need to strengthen the moral resources of the Filipino people rooted in Filipino culture, values and ideals that are pro God, pro people, pro country and pro nature”.
Then President Fidel V. Ramos issued Executive Order 319 that directed all government offices to form “integrity circles” in the government bid to adapt the moral recovery program as part of the way of life of the bureaucracy. (MindaNews)
