Whither the PDAF?

By DUCKY PAREDES
MALAYA

‘I suggest that we get back on track by going back to why the PDAF was created – to fund projects needed by the districts whose needs are best known to and served by their congressmen.’

Ma. Gracia Pulido-Tan

WHY not give PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Funds) only to District Congressmen and not a centavo to senators and partylist congressmen?

This seems reasonable after finding out from a Commission on Audit (COA) report that at least half of the Senate and close to half of our congressmen spent P6.156 billion in pork barrel funds using 82 questionable non-government organizations (NGOs) from 2007 to 2009.

Commission on Audit (COA) Chairman Ma. Gracia Pulido-Tan is careful not to suggest anything, even after she was obviously shocked to find that 10 of the dubious NGOs had links to controversial businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, while six had links to sponsoring lawmakers through relatives.

Clearly, the PDAF has been corrupted as another easy way to steal from the government. The congressmen and senators will try to explain themselves and like the charlatans and criminals caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, they will create stories that will make it very difficult to accept them as the honorable legislators they pretend to be.

Yet, it is not all legislative chicanery.

The Department of Budget and Management also approved P20 million in Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) to a nonexistent lawmaker, a certain Luis Abalos. (I wonder who actually took that money and how this was spent!)

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From 2007 to 2009, 74 lawmakers exceeded their pork barrel allocations by hundreds of millions. Each congressman has an allocation of P70 million and each senator P200 million a year in PDAF. Yet, most asked for even more and were granted more funds than others.

Who are these?

The COA report linked questionable fund releases to Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile; former senators Edgardo Angara, Juan Flavier, Ramon Magsaysay Jr., Manuel Villar, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Francis Pangilinan and Rodolfo Biazon; and Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Jinggoy Estrada, Gregorio Honasan, Lito Lapid, Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Ramon “Bong” Revilla, not necessarily in that order.

Notes Chairman Pulido-Tan: “A total of P6.156 billion was transferred by the agencies to 82 NGOs. This came from the PDAFs of 12 senators and around 180 representatives.

“Ten of the NGOs, which received a total of P2.157 billion, are presently linked to Janet Lim Napoles. Six other NGOs, on the other hand, which received a total of P189 million, were found to have included the legislators whose PDAF was transferred to the NGO, or a relative, as incorporator (or) officer.”

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There are hard and soft projects. Buildings, roads and other infra are hard projects and P1.393 billion from the PDAFs went to these hard projects. What was more interesting were the soft projects where more money went, all of P2.034 billion. Soft projects are those where the expense defies inspection, such as expenses for food, printed materials, training aides, trainers and so on.

COA found that the DBM failed to efficiently monitor and keep proper records of the fund releases of each legislator. The DBM could not provide a complete schedule of releases despite repeated requests.

What the COA found was that 74 legislators exceeded their allocations by hundreds of millions and one by P3 billion.

Many congressmen funded projects outside of their districts. Implementing agencies simply followed whatever the congressmen and Senators ordered, contrary to the DBM’s own rules.

There was also no assessment of the agencies’ capabilities to implement the projects, which means the releases were made essentially at the behest of the sponsoring legislators.

Implementing agencies simply transferred the funds to the NGOs identified or selected by the legislators. This runs counter to the rules of the Government Procurement and Policy Board.

“Even assuming the existence of appropriation or ordinance, the NGOs were not selected through competitive bidding as required by the resolution. The agencies merely relied on the endorsement of the legislators, some of whom denied their participation or signatures in letters and documents,” Tan says.

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I look at the PDAF as an experiment that rose out of EDSA Uno, when the people became as of one, kicked out the dictator and decided that they would now rule themselves. As part of this experiment, in the held belief that the congressmen were in the best position to know what their districts needed, the PDAF was created — equal funds for each congressman to be spent on what was needed by his district.

At that time, I remembered congressmen who were amazed that even those of them in the opposition, during the Cory years, were being given their PDAFs, same as everyone else. Of course, that was part of the experiment. Sadly, not only congressmen received their PDAFs. Even Senators who are elected by national vote were also given their PDAFs, which was three times larger than those of the congressmen even if they had no districts to speak of.

(Later, with the establishment of the partylist, these new congressmen who represented the under-represented and who also have no districts to care for, being also elected by the national vote, were given the same allocation as the district congressmen. I don’t know about you but wasn’t the signal to our legislators that this was money that they could spend as they pleased? Not necessarily for their districts but for whatever they had to buy or spend on? )

I suggest that we get back on track by going back to why the PDAF was created — to fund projects needed by the districts whose needs are best known to and served by their congressmen. As for the partylists, who knows that if there were no PDAFs for them, we may have less partylists competing for the honor (without PDAFs) of representing the under-represented. And, regarding our Senators, let’s keep them honest by keeping funds like PDAFs away from them. Then, perhaps, people like Janet may not even want to meet them. Why the heck would she be interested in anyone without any PDAFs?

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