Is SC ‘fitting’ to rule on ‘pork’ petitions?

Myriad ideas are being pitched on how to lessen calamity ruin. Ranging from environment safety to disaster readiness, some are as detailed as installing sirens in barrios to restoring the ROTC. Such works require government spending. Congress must schedule and price the projects right, to avoid corruption.

Disaster mitigation rests on congressional focus. For funds to redound to public good instead of ending up in personal pockets, people must stay alert. No longer should they let lawmakers award themselves multibillion-peso pork barrels, for them to steal while the populace suffers. The Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and other permutations of the “pork” must be subjected to line item disaster budgeting, from the bottom (barrios) up (to the national government).

One can look at it from the other end. Had the people barred the “pork,” the lawmakers would long ago have used such money for anti-calamity. They massively would have replanted mangroves as natural seawalls against tsunamis and storm surges, or retrofitted public structures against earthquakes and floods. Had there been no “pork,” there also would have been no incentive to build political dynasties, as in Leyte, and buy mayoralty votes for P10,000 per head, as in Tacloban City in last May’s elections.

“Pork,” dynasties, and fraudulent elections are the Philippines’ three worst man-made catastrophes.

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In the Supreme Court begin tomorrow the debates on the presidential pork barrel. And on the eve ex-senator Rene Saguisag points to an unnoticed backdrop. That is, the SC’s capability to rule on Malacañang’s secret discretionary lump sums, given its own silence on the Judiciary Development Fund (JDF).

The JDF are multibillion-peso collections of court fees since 1984. In that year P.D. 1949 began the use of the JDF thus: 80 percent for cost-of-living allowance (COLA) of judges and staff, 20 percent for equipment and facilities. Checks and balances were set up. The SC, convened by the Chief Justice, is to approve the allocation specifics. The Commission on Audit is to “quarterly audit the receipts, revenues, uses, disbursements, and expenditures.” The Presiding Justice of the Court of Appeals and all Executive Judges nationwide are to be given copies, for transparent posting in their respective courts.

But Saguisag echoes the complaint of good-governance activists that no such reports are given out. A professor of law, he challenges his students to find any copy within the month, and he’d pass them pronto.

Ten petitioners are questioning before the SC the Disbursement Assistance Program (DAP). That Palace version of the congressional PDAF ran up to P142 billion in 2011-2012. Impounded midyear were the project funds of slowpoke agencies, and yearend the savings of diligent ones. Through the Dept. of Budget and Management, President Noynoy Aquino realigned the money to unlisted projects. Thus, the petitioners say, the Executive violated the Constitution that empowers only the Legislature to approve national appropriations.

Separate petitions have been filed against the congressional PDAF. Totaling P27.5 billion a year, it consists of P200 million per senator and P70 million per congressman, for use in their pet projects. In reverse of the DAP, the PDAF purportedly violates the Constitution that empowers only the Executive to implement government works.

Stinks worsen the congressional and presidential “pork.” In 2007-2009 senators and congressmen plundered P10 billion PDAF, via fixers with fake NGOs and projects. The Executive has charged eight of them, with more to follow. In 2011-2012, Malacañang spent the DAP on supposed economic stimulants that, from the DBM website, look petty. Too, it gave away P13 billion of the DAP to selected lawmakers, to use as they please. In effect Malacañang doled the DAP as bonus loot for the same lawmakers it calls thieves.

Saguisag implies that the JDF is the Judiciary’s “pork.” Says he: “Does the money go to wellness, travel, vehicles, and Baguio mansions not intended by P.D. No. 1949?”

Controversy has long hounded the JDF. Its alleged misuse nearly brought down Chief Justice Hilario Davide a decade ago this month. Eighty-seven of 226 congressmen had crossed party lines in signing an impeachment, over a questioned P763 million of the P2.3-billion that year. Supposedly Davide allotted less than 80 percent to the COLA. Yet he spent it not for erecting offices and purchasing supplies. The complaint was that, as Saguisag recounts, he bought new limousines for the justices, and refurbished their vacation villas.

The justices circled wagons, ruling that the impeachment was unconstitutional for being the second filed against Davide within a year. Trashed was the fact that the first one never was officially verified, hence non-existent.

In the end Executive and Legislative leaders killed the indictment by having ruling party congressmen withdraw their signatures. But the JDF continued to be questioned. One time, the Chief Justice was exposed to have overspent on furnishings, foreign junkets, and health treatments, while courthouses deteriorated.

In Sept. 2010, upon ascent to office, the Aquino admin again raised the issue of opacity in JDF collections and spending. Relatedly Budget Sec. Florencio Abad removed additional allowances of Judiciary employees from the national budget. Haggling among Executive, Legislative and Judiciary leaders settled the issue. The SC was allowed to keep all allowances, whether from the JDF or tax collections, along with confidentiality of the JDF uses. During the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, the senators found that the justices also were not making public their Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. This was contrary to a law – written by Saguisag - for full disclosure.

So now Saguisag says: “The unelected Justices may not be the best judge of how to deal with pork as an institutional arrangement, given its silence on the JDF.”

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