Sabotage

Beyond the wholesale misappropriation and plunder of it all, the now illegal “disbursement acceleration program” (DAP) must also be condemned for economic sabotage.

When this whole horrifying scheme was set into motion in 2011, funding for many public works projects were arbitrarily cancelled. The funds allocated for them were declared “savings” and pooled into a large fund at the unaccountable disposal of President   Aquino.

There was neither rhyme nor reason to the projects wiped off the board to fabricate “savings.” Most of them were, of course, projects of the previous administration. In the case of the upgrade of the Tacloban airport, the allocated funds were abruptly taken back  presumably because the mayor there, in the infamous words of Mar Roxas, “is a Romualdez.”

The mad massacre of projects to accumulate the DAP resulted in a massive drop in public spending that year. That massive drop in spending in turn halved our GDP growth rate to barely above 3%.

By cutting our potentially robust growth rate, the insane effort to fabricate “savings” denied the jobless the opportunity to be employed. It pushed struggling small businesses to the brink. It probably foreclosed the possibility for our economic growth to be inclusive.

In a word, the malevolent scheme to produce fake “savings” in order to fatten the President’s personal pork barrel inflicted great harm on the most vulnerable sections of our society. This is no ordinary crime. It is the economic equivalent of genocide.

And where were the aggregated “savings” used? Were they used to improve social services and rescue our decrepit educational system? No evidence suggests that.

Malacanang to this day refuses to release a full accounting of the notorious DAP, claiming it might get into the way of a motion for reconsideration at the High Court. This could not be an excuse, unless unveiling the actual use of DAP might compound this administration’s predicament. In which case, withholding the information amounts to a cover-up.

All public spending ought to be transparent. That is the controlling democratic principle the Palace chooses to defy.

The very use of the phrase “disbursement acceleration” to describe this program is most dishonest. First they torpedoed our economic growth to aggregate the DAP. Then they tell us disbursement needs to be accelerated to produce growth. “Orwellian” is too tame an adjective to describe this illogic.

From what little we know about the details of DAP, this was even worse than a partisan scheme.  It was a scheme totally inspired by factional considerations.

The documentation for DAP skirted the Office of the Presidential Legal Counsel and the Office of the Executive Secretary. It was carried out with great secrecy in the inner sanctum of the presidency. To this point, the Secretary of the Budget has offered conflicting figures about the magnitude of funds involved in the DAP.

Some of the amounts, we now know, were freely handed out in the billions to legislators to supplement their equally unconstitutional pork. Billions more were handed out to supplement the internal revenue allocation of select local governments, supplementing the pork of local executives.

Billions were handed out to the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army and the Moro National Liberation Front. Billions more were distributed to political leaders of the ARMM, presumably to buy their support for the shaky peace plan this administration put together.

Very clearly, the pattern of “accelerated disbursement” was skewed to buy political support for the Liberal Party. Huge amounts went to the agencies that were bailiwicks of the LP faction, namely the DOTC and the DILG.

Whichever way we look at it, the DAP was used to particularly benefit consolidation of political support with the ultimate goal of ensuring this ruling clique will perpetuate itself in power. It is best described as a large war chest for bribery on a staggering scale.

How dare the Palace mouthpieces so blatantly lie to our faces and say this DAP was animated by “good faith.” Much as they suppress the details about “accelerated disbursement,” every new piece of information strengthens the impression this was a reverse Robin Hood program taking money from socially beneficial projects and handing it unaccountably to the political elite.

In more honorable times, a scheme like this one would have been simply described as treason. Its perpetrators would have been promptly put to the wall and shot.

Missing again

From whatever bunker he is hiding in, Butch Abad let it be known he was too busy to read the Supreme Court ruling declaring the DAP unconstitutional. What an arrogant attitude towards a co-equal branch of government.

Abad, if he needs to be reminded, is the person principally indicted by this Supreme Court ruling. The claim that he is too busy to even read the ruling smacks of complete disdain for the Court. One could imagine him, arms folded across his chest and a sneer on his face, telling the Court: “So sue me!”

By refusing to even show himself and explain his case, Abad not only dishonors the Court. He dishonors the nation. Even as citizens are perturbed by the recent turn of events, our political leaders have become completely invisible.

When President Aquino was heckled at Naga on Independence Day, he disappeared from public sight for over a week. He finally surfaced on June 24 for a day trip to Tokyo where he inappropriately endorsed Prime Minister Abe’s plan to circumvent the peace provision in the Japanese Constitution. All our neighbors in the region squirmed.

Since the Court pronounced the DAP unconstitutional, he has been missing again — along with his budget secretary.