THE Department of Health's deficiencies in spending P67.32 billion of Covid-19 response funds, as flagged by the Commission on Audit, bring to mind incidents when President Rodrigo Duterte aired his displeasure with the CoA's stringent auditing measures.

In January 2019, Duterte said CoA, an independent constitutional body in charge of scrutinizing expenditures of all government agencies, 'always makes things difficult.' He accused its auditors of hampering the work of his administration and went further, suggesting that they be kidnapped and tortured.