e've all heard the expression "things have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous" to describe a situation in which something starts out with great importance and with the noblest of intentions only to deteriorate considerably over a short span time. Sadly this idiomatic expression describes the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to a T.

What started out as a high-minded and noble organization established by former President Cory Aquino to recover the assets stolen by the Marcoses, has over the past two decades transformed itself into a bungling bureaucracy of incompetent fools that make the Keystone Cops look like a highly-trained SWAT team by comparison! The PCGG's track record of fumbles and missteps would be truly laughable were they not such serious and costly matters.

Latest case in point: In a decision that was made public July 6, 2007, the Sandiganbayan (a special court created to try graft and corruption cases against present and former government officials) dismissed a lawsuit filed by the PCGG against the Marcoses' P220 million Security Bank and Trust Co. account.

What was most telling about this latest Sandiganbayan decision was the fact that the Justices actually berated the PCGG's lawyers for not only failing to present sufficient evidence to back their claim, but for actually helping bolstering the arguments of their opponents in the case. In an unusual statement, the court noted “It is unusual for a party to come to court as plaintiff to prove that he does not owe [the] defendant. As things should normally happen, the plaintiff comes to court to assert that defendant owes him a sum of money and not the other way around.”

Well, Filipinos have had it with the PCGG. Over the years it has become nothing less than a big joke...a joke that no one feels the least bit inclined to laugh about. They are costing Filipino taxpayers a lot of money. In fact, for 2007 the Philippine Congress increased the PCGG's budget by 28 percent to P86.7 million. That money and what they received in previous years could have been better spent feeding and educating the homeless children we see out on the streets begging instead of attending school. There are other ways to get back what the Marcoses stole, unfortunately the PCGG is not one of them!