Even in death, the legacy of former Cong. Erico Aumentado of the second district as an honest public servant lives on. The late solon’s successor, Aris Aumentado, is now serving with the same zeal and honesty as his father did until his death Christmas day last year. While some of his colleagues in the current Congress are becoming restless every passing day for complicity in the multi-billion peso pork barrel scam, the late Aumentado rest in peace as the same Mr. Clean as when he served his constituents from 2010 to 2012. Although Aumentado, who was a three-termer ex-solon in the second district before he became Bohol’s governor when the Commission on Audit made a special audit report on how the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) was allocated to the NGOs through the Implementing Agencies (IAs) in 2007-2009. Inevitably, there is no way that Rico’s name will be included in the COA audit report. Aumentado went back to his old seat in 2010 when death overcame him in 2012.

Unfortunately, the COA report showed that four of the former Bohol congressmen—Edgar Chatto now Bohol governor, Roberto Cajes, lawyer Eladio Jala now commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and his son lawyer Adam Relson Jala, now city councilor, were also tainted with involvement in the pork scandal. All of them denied involvement in the accusation that they too partook the funds using fictitious NGOs. In that report, the budget for the priority development programs and projects identified by the congressmen and senators were included the General Appropriations Act (GAA) as a lump sum allocation under PDAF for the soft and hard projects. The soft projects include education, health, livelihood, comprehensive integrated delivery of services, finance to address specific pro-poor programs of the government, historical, arts and culture among others. In that COA special audit report, the soft projects for the former congressmen in Bohol listed P58.30 M for Edgar Chatto, P68.115 M for Roberto Cajes, P32.20 M for Adam Relson Jala and P23.10 M for Elpidio Jala.

They all said that their PDAF were released using the rules and regulations allowed by law. It was up to the implementing agencies who accredited and distributed the funds to the NGOs. The ex-solons said their part was only to incorporate the budget in their PDAF in the national budget. COA emphasized that the projects by the selected NGOs for the soft projects was not proper and highly irregular. There were no bases for the selection of suppliers as they did not conduct biddings while substantial transactions and distributions of items purportedly procured were not documented. The implementation of these soft projects were questionable for the following reasons: NGOs along with their suppliers turned out to be unknown or unlocated, or does not have permit to operate business and a number of NGOs were charging their operating expenses such as salaries and administrative expenses against PDAF. The same or similar trainings have been repeatedly attended by almost the same beneficiaries and conducted in the same barangays. This neither effective nor realistic, COA said. There were NGOs receiving funds from PDAF were incorporated by the congressmen and senators or by their relatives. In the COA list, the allocation of P32.347 B were taken from the PDAF of 356 congressmen and senators which included Chatto, Cajes and the two Jalas. Incidentally, the late Aumentado of the second district of Bohol, was not included in that list because he was the Bohol governor in 2007 to 2009.