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NO, Mr. Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II, we, the media, will not be the scapegoats as you try to weasel your way out of your latest bout of foot-in-mouth disease.

You lie when you claim you were “misquoted” when you lied about the fictitious meeting between opposition politicians and prominent Marawi clans that you then attempted to portray as a prelude to the continuing battle between government forces and extremist gunmen.

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There was no misquotation. Your words were recorded on video and audio. So, no, you are not passing the buck on to reporters who did what they are supposed to do–accurately report your official acts and pronouncements.

It is bad enough that you have shown no qualms about throwing the law, the truth and justice out the window in your headlong rush to persecute–sorry, prosecute–perceived foes of the administration.

But trying to blame others for your blunders unmasks you as a mean-spirited coward. –Ryan Rosauro, chairperson, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP)

Lack of Transparency

THE Department of Education (Deped) failed to comply with the posting and transparency requirements set by law regarding the SHS voucher system. These are billions of taxpayers’ money funneled into private schools.  The public wants to know if these schools really accepted the number of voucher students corresponding to the funds given to them and, considering the costs of private school education, whether these students continued high school at all.

Under Special Provision 14 of the Deped budget in the General Appropriations Acts for 2016 and 2017, Education Secretary Leonor Briones and the Deped website administrator are mandated to post in the websites of the Deped and the Private Education Assistance Committee (Peac) the list of beneficiaries and participating schools.  The data are not available in both websites as of this writing.

The 2016 SHS voucher program, which gives funds to private schools accepting Grade 10 completers from public junior high schools, amounted to P11.18 billion.  This increased to P23.85 billion in 2017 with an additional P1.17 billion for the technical-vocational track in private and non-Deped public schools such as state and local universities and colleges.

The DepEd falls short of the constitutional mandate on transparency when it fails to inform the public how exactly these billions are spent. This is troubling since the Commission on Audit noted several irregularities in the implementation of the Gastpe Program even before it was expanded to senior high school.

The COA 2013 audit report which observed, among others, that it cannot verify the fund releases of the Gastpe or Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in the Private Education due to the absence of necessary documents and records, including those pertaining to each grantee.  The COA also directed Deped and Peac, which administers Gastpe on behalf of Deped, to provide these records and open their books of account for audit by COA for transparency and accountability.

We call on Deped to comply with the law’s posting requirement and to release enrolment data in Grades 11 and 12 since the implementation of senior high school as soon as possible.

The implementation of the voucher program must be checked especially in light of the lack of transparency and the red flags that COA raised.  Instead of adding more funds for it, we should allot the amounts for the operations and maintenance of our public schools.  Increasing funds for the voucher program means increasing reliance on private provision of senior high school, which we believe is contrary to the government’s duty to provide free high school education to Filipino children,” the solons ended. –Antonio Tinio and France Castro, ACT Teachers representatives

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