Offense the best dispense

This issue on the other pork barrel called DAP is getting serious.

The controversial DAP of course is the so-called disbursement acceleration program of the Aquino (Part II) administration, which is besmirching government officials perhaps all the way up to our leader Benigno Simeon (aka BS).

It seems that our leader BS is no longer taking the DAP controversy lightly. From what I gathered, he is already set to go on nationwide television soon, most probably this week, to tackle the issue directly with his “bosses.”

Make no mistake. Our leader BS is continuing to go on the offensive. Deciding to tackle the DAP issue frontally, he already had himself invited initially to a “speaking engagement” before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines. He then claimed the existence of a “conspiracy” among politicians who were charged in court over the other pork barrel called PDAF, with media playing a major part in all of it.

Also last week, he had another speaking engagement before a huge group of business people during the 39th Philippine Business Conference, the yearly economic brainstorming session of the influential Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

It seems that the offensive strategy of our leader BS on the pork barrel controversy, particularly regarding the DAP, centers on the morality of the fund releases, meaning that the administration, our leader BS in particular, did not steal the money.

The administration line is that the pork barrel issue—suspiciously—already veered away from the legislators, including the three senators who were already charged with plunder over the PDAF.

In other words, the administration may be losing the battle in media over the pork barrel issue, and the Palace spin doctors apparently are dispensing to the public the wrong things.

For instance, Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda explained that the DAP funds were not meant for the lawmakers, because the funds went to projects done by the implementing agencies, with the lawmakers only nominating the projects. Hmmm.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is nevertheless the exact design of the pork barrel system, whether it is the PDAF or the DAP, or whatever all those hundreds of billions of pesos in congressional pork were called in the past several decades.

The PDAF funds also were never intended for the pockets of legislators. Lacierda’s explanation was not an explanation at all.

We all know the real issue over the DAP: The releases supposedly were bribes, specifically the funds that the administration disbursed to the projects “nominated” by some 20 senators who voted for the removal of former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

A number of cases were also filed before the Supreme Court questioning the legality of the DAP, because the Aquino (Part II) administration seemed to have taken too much liberty in moving funds around that were already appropriated by law under the GAA, or the General Appropriations Act.

In the business community, moreover, the issue over pork barrel—whether PDAF or DAP—is still what economists love to call the efficient use of scarce resources. Since the administration claimed that it sourced the DAP funds from “savings,” it wanted to spend the money anyway as an economic pump-priming measure. The problem is that the taxpayers, including big business, hardly knew where all those billions went.

To think, we still have this acute lack of infrastructure, and also one of the world’s worst airport terminals, apart from the shortage of classrooms, not to mention the monstrous traffic jams that we must suffer at any time of day.

How the administration used the “savings” through the DAP releases perhaps makes an interesting topic for our leader BS as he goes on the media offensive.

Really, did the releases amount to anything good at all?

* * *

Only until this week!

It was the deadline—okay, the ultimatum—given by Customs Commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon to the 27 customs collectors who contested their transfer to the newly created CPRO, which he said was created to help the BOC come up with policies to increase Customs collections.

At present, the BOC yearly collections amount to an equivalent of 12.9 percent of GDP (gross domestic product). The passable level in a struggling economy like the Philippines should be about 16 to 20 percent of GDP. The Aquino (Part II) administration wanted the BOC to hit at least 16 percent of GDP by the end of the term of our leader BS in 2016.

Originally, anyway, there were 27 customs collectors who filed a collective case to stop BOC head Rozzano Rufino from transferring them to what could be considered a “freezer” position, which was the newly created CPRO, or Customs Policy Research Office.

With only 11 of them left last week, as four more withdrew the petition filed with RTC (Regional Trial Court) Branch 17 under Judge Felicitas Larion-Cacanindin, it seems that the BOC group is now fighting a losing battle. One of them in fact already resigned from the bureau.

Now, we all know that the personnel movement in the BOC was part of the major reforms that our leader BS promised in his most recent Sona, since the Customs bureau has been consistently missing its collection targets by the tens of billions of pesos in the past three years, or throughout the Aquino (Part II) administration.

Judge Cacanindin already denied the petition of customs collectors for the issuance of a preliminary injunction against their transfer to CPRO. The judge ruled that the court could not deny the BOC its authority to assign its own personnel to whatever positions.

For their part, the customs collectors claimed that, with their transfer, they would suffer “irreparable damage.”

The court doubted such a claim.

Before the public, anyway, the case filed by those 27 customs collectors only served to bolster suspicion that theirs were actually “juicy” positions, and that was the reason why did not want to move to the freezer called CPRO.

Still, while the RTC denied their petition for injunction, the court case would continue. Thus, the finance department and the BOC had to go to the Supreme Court to stop the proceedings at the RTC.

The DOF and the BOC argued that, before the case was filed with the RTC, those 27 customs collectors should have aired their complaints, first with the BOC, then with the DOF, and finally with the Civil Service Commission (CSC).

In effect, the customs collectors did not try to exhaust the administrative remedies available to all government personnel. For one, as the DOF and the BOC argued, CSC has the exclusive jurisdiction over disputes involving personnel movements in the government.

Now the main argument of the holdout group of 11 customs collectors concerned their so-called security of tenure. It seems that they consider their transfer to the new office, the policymaking CPRO, as dismissal.

From what I gathered, in the transfer to CPRO, they will keep their pay level without any loss of seniority and all that.