Czech and balance

Up to today, more than three long years after the Aquino (Part II) administration pioneered this controversial program called DAP, the government has yet to produce even just a single credible audit of the money trail.

As we all know, including the lawmakers who apparently received “only” 9 percent of the DAP money (at least according to the boys in the Palace), this administration juggled almost P150 billion under the DAP from 2011 to 2013.

Huge portions of DAP money went to senators and congressmen, amounting to some P13.5 billion, if we can believe the “9-percent” claim of the Palace spinners, plus an amazing sum of P30 billion or so that went to LGUs.

Really now, through those enormous releases to lawmakers and local politicos, all done massively in just three years, we could regard the DAP as the largest fund-juggling made by the government in the history of this country.

Yet, come to think of it, we still do not have a single audit on the DAP releases to the lawmakers and the LGUs by our beloved COA, perhaps suggesting to the guys down here in my barangay that the COA already became part of the so-called cover-up.

In contrast, the constitutional body Commission on Audit earlier leaked its voluminous reports on the PDAF—the congressional pork barrel with the fancy name “Priority Development Assistance Fund”—which, of course, served to divert the storm in media away from the much bigger amounts involved in the DAP.

But then again the independent COA reportedly also benefited from the DAP, having received an undetermined huge amount, through the so-called cross-border transfer of funds that the Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional. Well, to start with, when the administration messed with the budget law passed by Congress for three years, its action already ran counter to the idea of the check-and-balance between the executive and the legislative branches.

In the business scene, some groups nevertheless assumed long ago that the Aquino (Part II) administration would have to resort to the “cover-up,” simply because the DAP controversy apparently involved the biggest guns in the Liberal Party.

And that is the political party of our leader Benigno Simeon (a.k.a. BS), which he apparently intended as the vehicle to pursue his “programs,” like the anti-corruption slogan “daang matuwid,” even way after his term would end in 2016.

Suspicion was rife that, as details on the DAP slowly spilled out to the public—albeit in whispers, apparently due to the absence of an official COA report—the fund diversion through DAP developed, eventually, to become an integral part of the grandiose plan for the Liberal Party and its candidates in 2016.

In short—fund raising, similar to the alleged “extortion” tried by some government officials believed to be supporters of the Liberal Party, as they pressured the Czech company called Inekon for kickbacks in the purchase of trains for the Edsa MRT line.

Officially, anyway, the boys of the Palace proclaimed the DAP as nothing but the basic economic pump-priming version of the Aquino (Part II) administration, similar to the measures undertaken by all other administrations in the past to prop up business.

But the money involved in the DAP could be nothing but simply astonishing, reaching almost P150 billion in three years from 2011 to 2013, at least according to some estimates, although the amount could be much more.

In the economic “pump-priming” spending of the government under previous administrations, the funds went to infrastructure projects, and the big difference was that bulk of these was programmed expenditures—not juggled funds.

The DAP of the Aquino (Part II) administration, on the other hand, reportedly redirected some P37 billion of the budget in 2011 to 2013, to the DPWH—yes, the slowpoke Department of Public Works and Highways, which dillydallied in its projects early in this administration, thus creating one of the justifications for the administration’s resorting to the DAP, in the first place.

And so the question remained: Boss, what happened to the rest of the more P110 billion? Based on reports that were based on snippets of disclosures coming from the boys in the Palace, the DAP funds for instance went to things like “emergency spending” to help local government units (LGUs) in the Yolanda-hit areas in the south.

We also heard that part of the money went to scholarship for technological students (as per the latest Sona of our leader, BS) and to some additional IRA for LGUs, although only select LGUs actually received money from the national government through the DAP.

And that alone—the unknown criteria in the DAP releases to the LGUs—should already have sounded alarm bells in the COA regarding the releases made by the Aquino (Part II) administration from the P150-billion public funds of DAP.

For all we know, the releases could be based on the whims of some politicos, in conjunction with their political plans for 2016! Look, boss, there were no known criteria!

Besides, the Philippine National Police reportedly also got billions of pesos from the DAP funds for some yet-to-be-explained features of the PNP “modernization” program. Did it mean, boss, that those features in a critical government program like the police “modernization” were not included in the budget in all those three years? And so what did the Aquino (Part II) administration put in the police budget?

The DAP further nudged the curiosity of the guys down here in my barangay when the government released huge portions of the supposed “supplemental IRA” (internal revenue allotment) for LGUs in March 2013.

What do you know—it happened to be just a few months before the mid-term elections, raising further the suspicion that the DAP became a tool for partisan politics, both in the national and in the local levels.

To think, the “supplemental IRA” given to the local officials reportedly came from the hijacked “savings” of various government offices, which surely denied the personnel some benefits. Again, when government employees were denied certain benefits, the COA should have jumped out of its stupor!

Like it or not, word went around that the Aquino (Part II) administration gave away a lot of the DAP money to local politicians who belonged to the Liberal Party, owing mainly to the timing of the release before the 2013 elections.

Question: Who were the key players in the DAP, aside of course from Budget Secretary Florencio Abad? Based on our info, another Cabinet member figured prominently in the program, together with a legislator (with about P1 billion in releases), who were both members of the Liberal Party said to have gotten the choicest cuts from the DAP pork, particularly as “discretionary” spending.

Look at that, billions of pesos went to “discretionary” funds of government officials—and there was no audit whatsoever!