COA starts probe on DAP releases

MANILA, Philippines - With its existence no longer a secret, the so-called Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) of the government – considered by critics as pork barrel in disguise – is now the subject of scrutiny by the Commission on Audit (COA).

“We have started looking into the DAP releases of senators and congressmen,” COA Chairman Grace Pulido-Tan told The STAR yesterday.

COA’s move was in response to a request from Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who had earlier voiced concerns over the Department of Budget and Management (DBM)’s admission that it had disbursed funds under DAP to senators.

Critics of the Aquino administration said the funds were a reward to senators for their ouster of chief justice Renato Corona last year. Malacañang has denied the allegation.

It was Sen. Jinggoy Estrada who revealed in a privilege speech last week the distribution of funds to senators – amounting to P30 million to P100 million – after the impeachment of Corona in May last year. Estrada clarified the money was not a bribe.

Tan said she couldn’t tell how long an audit of DAP would take but promised to have it completed “at the soonest possible time.”

She said they would still have to assess if regular audit teams could handle the task or if a special audit would be best for it.

“We do not know yet if we will do a special audit, we’re doing an initial assessment,” she said.

“The initial assessment will guide us in determining how to approach it, what type of audit we are going to do, what is the probable timeframe, who are the people we are going to put in the team,” Tan said.

She added that COA always acts on requests for investigation such as Santiago’s, which the latter had relayed in a letter.

In a short statement later yesterday, Tan said that based on initial reports from audit clusters, at least two agencies were found to have received DAP allocations from legislators. She didn’t name them.

“The corresponding audit reports shall be released in due course,” her statement read.

Tan said the DAP was mentioned in an annual performance summary report (APSR) for 2011, the year the program was supposedly created. This was confirmed by The STAR.

In the report, DAP was labeled as a program implemented by the DBM in the fourth quarter of 2011 “to fast-track disbursements and push the economy upward.”

“P72.11 billion was set aside for the DAP, which included fast disbursing and high-impact projects like critical public works and agriculture and infrastructure projects,” the report read.

The APSR said the funds were also for housing, relocation and settlement projects, additional funding support for local government units, rehabilitation of rail system, peace efforts support projects, healthcare insurance for indigents, and human resource developing training.

Of the amount, the COA report said P53.362 billion had been released to national governments agencies, local government units, and government-owned and controlled corporations. There was no mention in the report of the senators being given a share of the funds – or if such disbursement is allowed under the law.

Not DBM’s job

Former senator Joker Arroyo, in a press briefing, said it’s not DBM’s function to create DAP or realign funds.

“(The) DBM has no business issuing or forming this DAP because they cannot do that without a supporting law, since DAP involves money so they have to seek authority,” Arroyo said.

“Nowhere in our laws and in our general appropriations act would appear that DAP was created at all with the sanction of Congress,” he said.

“This is their own creation and I got involved in this because of the P47 million requested,” he said. “Being a creation of the department, that (DAP) is illegal. And disbursements of that, would also mean illegal.”

But he stopped short of implicating President Aquino in what he considered an illegal action of the DBM.

“The country is facing so much problems, we have the Mindanao problem, the Chinese problem, the Napoles and now we have the DAP and so many others,” the former lawmaker said.

He slammed Aquino’s officials and allies for reportedly perpetuating “a system where they promote quarreling and conflict.”

“We cannot continue this way. I hope media will watch the proceedings of the budget… the amendments, because this is how DAP was formulated. You will ask senators and those who know,” Arroyo said.

Pre-impeachment funds

He also said that apart from over P1 billion in additional funds released after Corona’s ouster, P500 million in Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) had been distributed among 11 senators at the height of the impeachment.

“Now, how many amounts were issued by the DAP? We do not know up to now. But this much I can say, at the height of the impeachment trial about the month of April, over P500 million was taken from PDAF, not DAP, and given to I think 11 senators at the height of impeachment,” Arroyo said.

“Later on, after the impeachment, another P50 million was given to whoever I don’t know. Where did this come from? From DAP,” Arroyo said.

“These are the amounts. We cannot just forget that, we cannot say that it is nothing,” Arroyo said.

Asked if the DAP funds represented “rewards” for Corona’s ouster, Arroyo said “I cannot cast judgment on that.”

“My concern is money moving when the trial was going on and after the trial. I will only go up to that extent and say that, insofar as the releases from DAP, they are all illegal,” Arroyo said.

He noted that DAP only came to public knowledge after Abad’s own admission of the distribution of P50 million to P100 million to senators last year.

“PDAF, they say, is no good. But DAP is worse. PDAF has a legal standing. It was created by law. It is in the GAA. DAP is not,” Arroyo added.

Based on the DBM website, the 11 senators were Francis Escudero, P98 million; Ramon Revilla Jr., P86 million; Pia Cayetano, P55 million; Juan Ponce Enrile, P54 million; Estrada, P50 million; Lito Lapid, P50 million; Manny Villar, P49 million; Gregorio Honasan, P42 million; Drilon, P40 million; Edgardo Angara, P25 million; and Antonio Trillanes IV, P10 million.

Unconstitutional

Santiago, for her part, pointed out that DAP was not in the 2011 or 2012 budget program, but that President Aquino should seize the opportunity to permanently fix the flawed budget system.

She also called the creation of DAP unconstitutional. “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the President… may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations,” she said.

Santiago said that the Constitution allows fund transfers, only if there are savings, meaning a project has been completed without exhausting appropriation. She said there are no savings if a project has been merely deferred.

The senator said it appears that DAP funds were taken from alleged slow-moving projects.

“The first issue is that the DAP was not taken from savings. The second issue is that the DAP was not used to augment items in the budget that were previously authorized by Congress. The alleged savings were used to augment new budget items not previously authorized by Congress,” she said.

She has also re-filed a bill limiting the power of the President to impound appropriations through the “Budget Impoundment Control Act.”

Santiago’s Senate Bill 404 seeks to mandate the President, secretary of budget and management, and heads of agencies or departments to notify Congress first of any move to defer the release of any appropriation.

Santiago noted that it was President Aquino, when he was still a senator, who filed Senate Bill 3121or the Budget Control and Impoundment Act.

“President Aquino’s proposed impoundment law takes a fiscally responsible position. If he doesn’t mind, I will simply refile it in the Senate, with an explanatory note that it was originally filed by President Aquino,” Santiago said.

Santiago said that the budget department is “chipping away at the legislative power of the purse by fiddling with the budget.”

“The budget department website shows that it is running rings around the budget. In certain cases, it has initially released the allotment, meaning an authority to spend,” she said.

“Then, claiming that the department head was slow in using the funds, it ‘retrieved’ the released funds. Then it disbursed the funds for budgetary items not expressly authorized by Congress. The process is not at all transparent,” she said.

SC help sought

Meanwhile, constitutionalists and legal experts are set to question before the Supreme Court (SC) the legality of DAP.

The Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa) arrived at the decision after a meeting yesterday, according to Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez.

“We were all aghast, angry over this DAP, which was not authorized by any law, by Congress, and was not listed in any books nor in the GAA (General Appropriations Act) since 2010,” Romualdez said.

“So what we could have here is a secret stash or a huge slush fund that could have been used, as alleged by some colleagues, to bribe members of Congress,” he said.

“The administration, the DBM have been coming up with vague terms that are not easily understood by the people to cover up their fund releases,” he said.

He said Philconsa in the 1994 questioned before the SC the constitutionality of the Countrywide Development Fund, the precursor of PDAF.

Among the prominent leaders and members of Philconsa are former ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco, former University of the Philippines law dean Froilan Bacungan, and retired chief justice Reynato Puno.

Romualdez said he was curious as to how the administration would justify the DAP.

“They did not tell the people that ‘hey, we have P85 billion in savings’, only now when this thing broke out. So will they antedate an EO (executive order)? But that’s supposed to be in the national gazette as soon as it’s issued,” he said.

He reiterated that President Aquino must scrap his own pork barrel, after the House abolished the PDAF.

The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), meanwhile, denied it was remitting funds to the President’s Social Fund.

In a letter to The STAR, PCSO chair Margarita Juico said “all disbursements of revenues are made strictly in accordance with pertinent laws and their implementing guidelines, rules and regulations.”

“President Aquino never even tried to influence and never influences the PCSO board in the allocation and distribution of the PCSO’s corporate funds,” she said. With Paolo Romero