‘Let it all hang out’

So when our legislators, being ‘on the right side of history’ cut here and there, and then add here and there, expect the re-alignment to be laced with pork as well

I happened to be in the US in the eighties when I watched on television a replay of a concert which featured Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.

They performed a duet of “Let it all hang out,” which, upon checking with Google recently, was supposedly sung by a forgettable group called The Hombres.

My recollection of the otherwise ugly song in that performance was more focused on the pectoral endowments of Dolly Parton, who Rogers teased about letting it all hang.

When I listened to former president Rodrigo Duterte hitting Congress over the confidential funds where he demanded the Commission on Audit should bare details of how the legislature and legislators spend their humongous budget, the memory of Dolly Parton came fresh.

Otherwise, the former president would “ask everybody, every soldier, every policeman, every farmer, the Church” to demand a full account on how they spent the funds they themselves appropriated, having the ‘power of the purse,’ and then he described the legislature as the “most rotten institution.”

What would the COA do, now headed by its chairman, Gamaliel Cordoba, who prior to his appointment to replace former Solgen Joe Calida (a Duterte and Marcos loyalist), was the longest-running NTC Chairman (from Arroyo to Aquino to Duterte)?

If COA complies with the demand of PRRD, will it just come up with a slew of liquidation documents which, as Atty. Harry Roque, the former spokesman of Duterte, claims as “mere certifications” with no supporting list of expenditures?

And would the former president then call upon the people to demand a full accounting not only of the confidential funds, but likewise the ‘extraordinary expenses’ that HoR SecGen Reginald Velasco claimed to be subject to audit by the COA?

Meanwhile, congressional leaders chorused that they see no pork in their HoP (they prefer their house to be of the ‘people’), stating they are compliant with the SC ruling that outlawed the practice. He, he, he!

The former president demands transparency to the fullest on how all these funds