While I cannot condone the rough treatment accorded Budget Secretary Butch Abad by some students of the University of the Philippines last week, when he was pelted with stones and coins after a speech at the School of Economics, I must also say that I quite agree with their demand that he be made accountable for the illegal disbursement of funds under the Disbursement Allocation Program that had been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
It is indeed infuriating that despite the high tribunal’s directive “to investigate and accordingly prosecute all government officials and/or private individuals for possible criminal offenses related to the irregular, improper and/or unlawful disbursement/utilization of all funds under the Pork Barrel System,” not a single soul, particularly Abad, has been subject to investigation nor prosecution by the Department of Justice.
Instead of backing down, as the Supreme Court has ordered, the Department of Budget and Management under Abad has continued to include in the proposed 2015 national budget billions of pesos in un-programmed funds.
According to former Senator and Manila Times columnist Francisco S. Tatad, Malacañang included huge prohibited lump sums in the 2014 and 2015 national budgets. He noted that for the current year, the un-programmed funds amount to P139.9 billion, while the Special Purpose Funds amount to P282.6 billion.
He said that for 2015, the un-programmed amount is down to P123.1 billion, but the Special Purpose Funds allotment goes up to P378.6 billion. He cited reports that the congressmen who were receiving P70 million each before the PDAF was outlawed, would now receive P108 million per.
Either Abad has no respect for the law or the Supreme Court decision, or the need to create lump sums for the 2016 elections is so dire that he is willing to risk admonition from the court.
Abad is also trying to save himself from possible prosecution and to allow him and his Malacanang colleagues to continue their illegal DAP program by asking Congress to pass a bill he has submitted that seeks to redefine “savings” and make the law retroactive.
In a letter to House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr., Abad asked Congress to adopt and prioritize the draft bill that effectively redefines the practice of impounding savings that the SC ruled as illegal and unconstitutional. He even requested Belmonte to consider the bill a priority measure.
“The fact that Abad requested the Speaker to accommodate the redefinition of ‘savings’ is a clear admittance of his criminal liability, and now he wants to use Congress to absolve him,” said opposition leader Rep. Tobias Tiangco.
Section 7 of the Abad bill reads: “To dispel any doubt as to this legislative intent, the provisions in this Act shall be retroactive and curative in nature. Accordingly, all previous acts relating to the definition of savings, the rules on augmentation and other related concepts, as well as the use and release of the Unprogrammed Funds made, applied, consummated, executed, undertaken, and implemented prior to the passage of this Act are hereby confirmed, ratified and validated.”
With the redefinition of savings, the DBM wants unspent funds for programmed projects even in the middle of the year to be pooled as savings, contrary to the SC ruling.
Tiangco also revealed last week that Malacanang released P78.38 billion from the Disbursement Acceleration Program over a period of three months that coincided with the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona, with senators who sat as judges in his trial and lawmakers who acted as prosecutors getting huge sums for undisclosed projects.
Tiangco said that based on a revised list that the DBM was forced to release to the House last week to meet the deadline set for the budget deliberations, the lawmakers started receiving their DAP allocations without the corresponding details of where the money went two days before Corona was impeached by the House on Dec. 12, 2011, the same day that the Senate convened itself into an impeachment court.
The DBM list showed that President Aquino approved and released the DAP funds in six tranches. In 2011, the President approved the DAP in two tranches – some P67.38 billion on Oct. 12 and P11 billion on Dec. 21. There were three releases in 2012 – P21.21 billion on June 27, P2.73 billion on Sept. 5 and P33. 07 on Dec. 21. There was only a single release of the DAP in 2013 amounting to P8.96 billion in June 14.
The six DAP fund releases amounted to P144.378 billion, which under the Supreme Court ruling, were all illegally disbursed.
Another bombshell revealed during the budget hearing was that, according to ACT party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio, Malacanang deliberately bloated the amounts for unfilled positions, maternity pay and bonuses of teachers and state workers so that it could impound up to P145 billion to fund the illegal Disbursement Acceleration Program for three years.
Tinio demanded that Congress delete special provisions inserted by the Palace in the 2015 national budget that allow it to again impound funds by midyear next year. He pressed for the deletion of P118.14 billion in the “Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund” (MPBF), which was a lump sum under the direct control of Aquino.
Tinio said the MPBF, which has now bloated to 50 times its level in 2005 (P2.36 billion) and increased by 67 percent since Aquino became president (P70.658 billion in 2011), was deliberately bloated to put more discretionary funds in the hands of the President.
Based on all these revelations, it is obvious that Abad is no saint and deserved to be the subject of protests, albeit not in the manner with which the UP students manhandled him. That he remains in the confidence of Aquino and free from any investigation probably brought out the students’ ire.
(valabelgas@aol.com)