Justice must be served

Not even the best written slogan can mask the growing perception that the Philippines and its leaders are so corrupt that a massive public uprising has become inevitable, if not necessary, to reform the system.

No less than President Aquino described the state of the nation as one of corruption in his recent SONA when he zeroed in on nefarious activities at several government agencies.

Imagine the shock of many when allegations of illegal activities involving no less than the President and his closest allies were exposed.

The President may have many faults, but corruption is not one of them. Or could it?

Allegations of juggling of public funds by the President and Budget Secretary Butch Abad involving the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) have unfortunately brought corruption charges to the very doorsteps of Malacañang and punctured President Aquino’s anti-corruption mantra.

Legal luminary eagles like constitutional expert Fr. Joaquin Bernas, a member of 1986 ConCom, and government budget experts like former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno have noted that the Constitution bars Malacañang from fund juggling.

UP  professor Randy David in his column had also noted that the media and the public have already moved beyond the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) and have now zeroed in on all forms of discretionary funds—particularly those under the control of the President.

Taking up the challenge is no less than retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno, who many probably do not know was an activist,  for the Million People March movement to further raise public awareness of what he called “the evils of PDAF and DAP.”

This group’s organizers are now linking up with other civil-society sectors like Democracy Watch to mount joint protest activities to, among others, pressure Malacañang and Congress to give up their pork, open to the public the Bicameral Committee deliberations on the 2014 budget program, allocate special purpose funds and other unprogrammed funds to line agencies, and make public the audit report by the Commission on Audit (COA) on all presidential funds since 2010.

The Million People March is also demanding the filing of charges against all pork-barrel pilferers before the Sandiganbayan by Dec. 6, or 100 days from the surrender of suspected pork scam mastermind Janet Napoles.

According to the group, pork means all modes of public spending that has little or no accountability and includes the billions and billions of discretionary funds in all branches of government.

Group convenor Peachy Bretana noted that “government and lawmakers (must) see us as ‘One Pinoy with one demand’: for them to treat us and serve us honestly.”

Meanwhile, Democracy Watch convenor Tim Abejo says that the feeling of disappointment and anger has reached a tipping point where the government has no choice but to respond with truth and justice.

Democracy Watch will actively support the initiatives of the Million People March thru a series of forums that will further educate the public on the Pork Barrel Scam, starting off with next week’s forum at the De La Salle University campus along Taft Avenue. The objective is to push urgent reforms either through legislation or through People’s Initiative.

The political brouhaha actually reinforces what the people have long realized – that this government is all talk.

Perceived judicial encroachments, notably the recent court actions voiding the permit to operate of Federal Express (FedEx) as well as the nearly P484-million tax refund of the San Roque Power Corp., and Malacañang’s inaction on Sagittarius Mines’ $5.9-billion Tampakan project, have convinced investors that doing business here is a risky venture because of the government’s penchant to change rules midstream.

Another letdown for the investment community is the comedy of errors attending President Aquino’s pet PPP program, specifically the handling—or better yet, mishandling—by the Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) of its big-ticket transportation projects that have been hounded by one delay after another.

Now back to the DAP.

One of the sensational twists that have cropped up in the Napoles drama is the discovery that DAP funds were released at P50 million per senator a year ago after the impeachment trial that led to the ouster of then-Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Both Drilon and Abad had confirmed this fund release, with the Budget secretary admitting that 20 senators received P1.107 billion in extra pork after the 2012 trial, but maintained that such funds were released after the trial and were thus not meant in any way to entice the then senator-judges to vote for Corona’s conviction.

One media report bared that Senators Bong Revilla, Jinggoy Estrada, Bong-Bong Marcos and Tito Sotto received a total of P400 million for agrarian-related projects in 2011, and all four of them eventually realigned most of the amount, through the DBM, to the National Livelihood Development Corp. (NLDC).

President Aquino himself has become the target of attacks because he has taken it upon himself to defend the DAP as part of a “use it or lose” Cabinet policy to realign savings, which, he added, was also practiced during the past Arroyo administration.

According to the President, “there is no reason for everybody to be delayed if there is an opportunity to accelerate that project which was approved by Congress, which they found merit with, and if we can accelerate the benefits that will accrue to the people, why delay it?”

“So, why lose and go through the whole process and have it approved again in a subsequent year?” stressed the Chief Executive in adding that his Cabinet members knew that when it came to project funding, “we give it to somebody else who’s way ahead of his schedule and thereby get to the fulfillment of whatever project or program is at an earlier stage.”

Fr. Bernas and Diokno, now a UP economics professor, have argued that the DBM cannot just pool government savings and use these funds for other purposes at Malacañang’s sole discretion without running afoul of the Constitution and the yearly General Appropriations Act (GAA) laws.

Bernas and Diokno both argue that Malacañang has no authority to juggle funds in the GAA or national budget from one department or agency to another.

Bernas argued that while the President, Senate President, Speaker, Chief Justice and the heads of constitutional Commissions are authorized by the constitution to use their budget savings to augment GAA items in their respective offices, they do not have the “authority to create new items not found in the Appropriations Act.”

Bernas said this restriction on fund transfers was underscored by the Supreme Court when it struck down as unconstitutional in 1987 a provision (Section 44) of Presidential Decree No. 1177 that sought to empower the President to “indiscriminately transfer funds.”

This constitutional power is activated, said Bernas, “when Congress passes a law to implement it. For that reason, an authorization from Congress is invariably written in the annual GAA.”

“The named officials can transfer only ‘savings’ in ‘items’ allotted to them,” he said. “An ‘item’ is a specific amount of money set aside for a special purpose. Savings are leftovers after the purpose has been satisfied.”

Moreover, Bernas said, “they can transfer savings only to ‘augment’ items in their appropriations. These items which are to be augmented must already be found in the appropriation for their respective departments in the same budget year. What this means is that the power to transfer is not authority to create new items not found in the Appropriations Act.”

Even retired CJ Puno has gotten so riled up that he recently urged the MillionPeopleMarch to convene a People’s Congress to pass a law—by way of the People’s Initiative provision in the 1987 Constitution—that would scrap both the DAP and PDAF, and check the “abuses of Congress in the exercise of its power over the purse.”

Puno has called on this movement to raise public awareness of “the evils of PDAF and DAP,” so the people could exercise for the first time their “reserve power” to rewrite the Constitution—as spelled out in Republic Act No. 6735—by abolishing “our rotten pork barrel system,” considering that neither President Aquino nor Congress is expected to scrap it for them.

Malacañang claimed that the Administrative Code authorizes the Chief Executive to realign savings, but former Sen. Joker Arroyo, who was executive secretary when the late Cory Aquino was President, scored president Aquino for using this code to create the “patently illegal” DAP.

Sen. Miriam Santiago, who is also a legal expert and former trial court judge, said that not one among President Aquino’s four predecessors had invoked the Administrative Code to realign funds.

This is indeed one telenovela that has taken so many twists and turns, but one thing is sure - somebody has to pay because the Filipino people want to see justice served in whatever way possible.

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