MANILA, Philippines - Like an evil genius.
This was how former senator Joker Arroyo described Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad with the way he supposedly used some legislators in his allocation of funds tied to the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).
Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, for his part, branded Abad as a “congenital liar.”
Tiangco said Abad is doing everything to cover up the DAP by “spreading erroneous data” on funds released to legislators from the stimulus fund.
Arroyo has repeatedly denied getting any of the DAP funds when he was still senator and said he knew nothing about the program.
However, his name continued to be included in the list of legislators who were supposedly allocated DAP funds, which were used to finance some pet projects.
Arroyo pointed out the P47 million that was tied to his name in the list of DAP allocations was not his doing even though it was being made to appear that the funds went to some projects that were part of his advocacies.
It was clear to Arroyo how the funds came to be associated with his name and he was certain that Abad was responsible for this.
According to Arroyo, the P47 million went to the construction of three school buildings and to a number of hospitals where the funds were parked for medical assistance.
Arroyo knew this because he proposed these amendments to the 2013 General Appropriations Act, which were not approved by his colleagues.
Abad himself clarified to Arroyo in a Sept. 30, 2013 letter that the P47 million “was not sourced from amendments to the 2013 GAA, but was instead charged against the Disbursement Acceleration Program.”
“Thus, I have never ever asked nor received from Secretary Abad or DBM (Department of Budget and Management) P47 million from DAP,” Arroyo said.
In that same letter, Arroyo said Abad justified his initiative to allocate P47 million of DAP funds to him because “they were in line with the Aquino administration’s development agenda, particularly with respect to providing quality education and health care services to disadvantaged Filipinos.”
“Abad was being disingenuous. Congress disapproved my proposal for P47 million funding. The budget secretary in effect overruled the judgment of Congress and appropriated P47 million to me from DAP,” Arroyo said.
“The budget secretary, by his lonesome self and at his level, does not have the authority to allocate at his discretion funds for certain projects and assign its disbursements to legislators, local government units and other agencies. This is the core issue of DAP,” he added.
The controversy over the DAP first emerged during a privilege speech delivered by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who claimed additional funds were given by Malacañang to senators who voted to convict former chief justice Renato Corona.
At the time, none of the legislators knew about the existence of DAP and that additional funds given to them were related to this program.
The grant of additional funds to the senators was seen as a reward for their vote to convict Corona.
“Was Mr. Abad’s initiative borne out of altruism? No, it’s evil geniusness. I voted to acquit CJ Corona in the impeachment trial. To show that the administration is impartial, Mr. Abad bestowed upon me, for appearances, P47 million of DAP funds to squander even if it did not even pass thru me,” Arroyo said.
“We are talking of an estimated P150 billion of DAP. Nobody knows the exact figure because DBM has not been forthcoming,” he added.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who also voted to acquit Corona, was also placed in the list of legislators who received DAP funds.
Santiago said that if ever DAP funds went to her office, she never asked for any.
“Abad is a real liar – a congenital one. At first he didn’t want to give the list, only then after he was forced to give a list when I questioned the quorum last Monday, around 2:45 p.m. of September 15, 2014,” Tiangco added.
“He said it’s the same copy as DBM’s, but during the interpellation the pages of his copy and the number of pages of mine were not the same. The copy given to me had 128 pages only. His copy had more than 128 pages. So definitely my copy was sanitized,” he added.
Aside from this, Tiangco said his copy had a lot of blanks in the column for proponents.
“So, what was the intent of having conflicting copies with incomplete data? Wasn’t he already making a big lie?” he asked.
Tiangco said Abad promised on record in the plenary that he would submit to Congress the complete records on September 17.
“At 8 p.m. Sept. 17, no record was submitted to Congress. Instead, the DBM posted a report on September 17 late in the evening. And when it was checked on Sept. 19, it was already a different report. Both reports had a lot of blanks in the column of the proponent, that is why the total was only P8.8 billion, short by P2.2 billion of the P11 billion. Even the reporters noticed the big discrepancies in the lists,” he added. – Wtih Jose Rodel Clapano
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