In hushed tones, along the corridors of the Batasan building, people speak of something potentially explosive. The SAROs issued by the Department of Budget to reward legislators for their good work on the RH Bill and the Corona impeachment, using money from the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), supposedly specified the NGOs linked to Janet Napoles as executors of the projects.
One congressman is reportedly trying to book time on the podium to deliver a privilege speech on the matter. The speech will ask Budget Secretary Butch Abad to make public all the SAROs released using DAP funds.
There is another method for prying into the files of the DBM to make these documents public. A Supreme Court justice may issue a subpoena for these documents. There are, after all, several petitions brought to the High Court questioning the constitutionality of the DAP.
If the information circulating about SAROs specifying the Napoles NGOs as channels for DAP funds is baseless, there is one simple thing for the DBM to do to quell all rumors circulating. The DBM simply has to make public the subject documents.
The DBM has been extremely secretive lately. Documents regarding fund disbursements are hard to acquire. The secretiveness can only fuel all sorts of speculation — especially since many pro-administration legislators mentioned in the affidavits of the whistle-blowers have not been charged. The case of Ruffy Biazon is a notable exception, leading to a separate genre of speculation that he was sacrificed by powerful administration players.
Until debunked by the DOJ through release of the subject documents, the circulating rumors about the DAP-linked SAROs could seriously impair the case for DAP’s constitutionality.
As it is, the DAP stands on very shaky grounds. What the DBM calls “savings” are actually funds from discontinued projects. That is clearly misidentification. Allocations for discontinued projects should revert to the general fund, to be allocated at a later time by Congress, properly exercising its power over the purse.
During the first round of oral arguments before the High Court, several justices asked for documentation regarding this questionable spending program. Government lawyers produced none.
The most basic infirmity of the DAP, apart from there being no document authorizing it, is the fact that a still undisclosed amount was farmed out to legislators for them to spend on whatever they fancy. That clearly establishes this “program” as the President’s pork barrel, disbursed entirely on his discretion.
In the case of the additional allotments given to senators and congressmen for their good work in passing administration measures and undermining the separation of powers by impeaching the Chief Justice, money from fictional “savings” transforms into outright pork. What legal alchemy makes this possible?
If, indeed, SAROs were issued specifying end users of these funds, this should be the last nail on the coffin for DAP.
This potentially explosive evidence not only establishes DAP as pork, pure and simple, it will also establish this administration as a criminal collusion, using the pork barrel of legislators as channels for orchestrated corruption.
Lump sum
I heard this first from Sen. Franklin Drilon: the remaining portion of the PDAF (aborted by the Supreme Court’s celebrated ruling) are funds available for other uses. Those presumably existing funds may therefore be redirected, by means of a supplemental budget measure, to such other uses like a “calamity fund.”
Surely, we need more money to deal with the devastation wrought by severe weather. We ought not, however, presume that the unspent PDAF allocation are “available funds.” They are merely allocations, not necessarily cash. Why, for instance, are legislators who do not toe the administration line, condemned to enjoy their pork “subject to availability of funds”?
At any rate, Congress does seem to be in a hurry to realign the unspent PDAF allocations into another lump sum, a “calamity fund” without specific line items. This, too, could be unconstitutional.
Rep. Lito Atienza and a few other independent colleagues are challenging the realignment of PDAF allocations to another (probably legally infirm) lump sum item.
Before he assumed his seat in this Congress, Atienza has long fought the pork barrel. As a member of the Marcos-dominated Batasang Pambansa, he and retired justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma fought the earliest version of what eventually morphed into the PDAF. They won that battle then, the dictatorship notwithstanding.
At the start of this Congress, Atienza delivered a privilege speech assailing the PDAF as illegal and unconstitutional. He was jeered by his colleagues at the House of Representatives — including by the left-wing party-list representatives who enjoyed their pork allocations in the previous Congress. The Supreme Court validated his decades-long crusade against the pork barrel system.
Today, in the wake of the High Court ruling, that crusade against pork barrel politics takes the form of battling all lump-sum appropriations. Such appropriations could well be pork in disguise.
At the risk of appearing jaded, denying additional funding for the victims of calamity, Atienza and his motley alliance are standing up to force the majority to work harder and itemize the supplemental budget. It is the principle of narrowing the margin of discretion over public funds that is the point of it all.
PDAF, by any other name, is still pork. Loosely defined lump sums are potentially pork. If this administration could fabricate “savings,” it could manufacture pork.
It is not enough to trust men who loudly proclaim they do not steal. We must ensure procedures for spending public money are such that they cannot even if they wanted to.
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