PM calls for special audit of DAP

CEBU, Philippines - Labor group Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) has echoed the mounting calls to have the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds subjected to a special audit after the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.

 PM-Cebu spokesperson Dennis Derige said their main and immediate interest is to know whether DAP funds were squandered in the same manner that the Priority Development Assistance Fund was used.

“What we want to know now is whether a DAP released to a lawmaker’s left hand is better spent than a PDAF released to his/her right hand,” Derige said in a statement.

He said Malacañang’s defense that there was nothing wrong with DAP’s disbursement since it was done in good faith is flatly self-serving as DAP’s worth needs to be proven beyond the realm of motives or intentions.

 He said the political context when DAP was concocted and eventually released has overly been discussed.

He added that a special audit for used and unused DAP funds may either clear many issues or uncover the same pattern of fraud committed under PDAF or may be worse.

 “Assuming the crime was repeated, the political discussion should therefore lead to a conclusion that the whole system is terribly wrong,” Derige said.

 PM believes that funds released under DAP and received by the same hands that made PDAF their personal piggy banks are tainted with corruption.

Voting unanimously, 13 Justices of the Supreme Court ruled this week that the executive branch overstepped its powers using the lump sum funds under the program.

The court resolution states that DAP acts violate Section 25(5), Article VI of the 1987 Constitution and the doctrine of separation of powers of the executive and legislative branches.

The court struck down portions of the DAP allowing the transfer of savings outside the executive branch, the funding of government projects not covered by the General Appropriations Act and the renaming of unreleased allotments and appropriations supposedly for agencies to “savings.”

Also nullified was the use of “unprogrammed funds despite the absence of a certification by the National Treasurer that the revenue collections exceeded the revenue targets,” it added.

The ruling indicates that the Department of Budget and Management allowed the use of funds without clearance that those funds came from government savings. (FREEMAN)