DAP like a hot potato

Once again, for the second time in less than eight months, the Supreme Court said that the scandalous P140-billion hot potato called DAP, the Disbursement Acceleration Program of the Aquino (Part II) administration, was unconstitutional.

In other words, the program was simply illegal.

The administration claimed that it used the DAP merely as an economic tool, and that the administration had nothing but good faith in its implementation.

Despite the supposed economic benefits from the DAP, and no matter how spotless or righteous the intention of the saints who invented it, the fact remained that in dancing the DAP, somebody or some groups actually broke the law.

According to reports, the SC also relented somewhat by saying that the SC also “recognized the encouraging effects of the DAP on the country’s economy and acknowledged its laudable purposes.”

Well and good—the ultimate arbiter of the land of about 100 million people, perhaps thought that something illegal, which in the end could only mean something criminal, could bring about “encouraging effects” with its “laudable purposes.”

What was it really now—a laudable act that should be encouraged because in the first place it was simply illegal?

Truly, the new SC decision came only a few months after our leader Benigno Simeon (a.k.a. BS) went berserk with his personal launching of an aggressive attack against the SC.

Remember—it was in July last year when the SC first decided that the DAP was, indeed, unconstitutional!

Down here in my barangay, the guys could still hear the words of our leader, BS, in his nationally televised speech, complete with the seal of the President of the Republic rather prominent behind him—as if to emphasis his power and authority!

In that nationwide broadcast carried by all the television stations in the entire country, our leader, BS, used rather strong language to lambast the SC for going against the administration on the DAP issue.

For instance, he claimed that the SC had failed to take into consideration the main legal basis of the DAP, even specifying the actual sentence contained in Sec. 39, Chapter 5, Book VI of the 1987 Administrative Code.

Indeed, the code (Executive Order No. 292) gave the President of the Republic the authority to juggle government funds, which was precisely what the Aquino (Part II) administration did in the DAP.

Never mind that, as noted by legal luminaries in the country, the 1987 Constitution actually trumped the administrative code, primarily because the Constitution came way after the administration code EO.

Subsequently, in other speaking engagements that had absolutely nothing to do with the economy or the government budget, our leader, BS, indicated that he thought the SC was too meddlesome in the economic affairs of the country.

He even threatened to clip the powers of the SC by pushing for amendments in the 1987 Constitution that came into being during the term of his own mother, the late former President Corazon C. Aquino.

In short, our leader, BS, declared war against the SC, a war that he would wage in media, of course, and media would only obliged him, because anything that the President of the Republic would say or do, or smile or sneer about, would automatically become news worthy.

With the SC “affirmation” of the unanimous (with a vote of 13-0) ruling on the unconstitutionality of the DAP, one big question remained: Who would be answerable for the illegal DAP?

According to the SC, those should be the “authors,” and the guys down here in my barangay of course took it to mean that they should be our leader, BS, and Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad.

Ironically, the DAP became a controversial issue after Sen. Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, who is now in jail for the case of plunder in connection with another pork barrel known as PDAF, revealed that the administration bribed lawmakers with “pork” in the impeachment of former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

The Department of Budget and Management then reacted by saying that “pork” was actually not “pork,” because the funds really just came from the DAP, which the administration at that time simply called “savings.”

As it turned out, the DAP already encouraged the administration to juggle some P144 billion in government funds all this time, which was nevertheless the figure claimed by the Aquino (Part II) administration.

The guys down here in my barangay could never know the actual amount, precisely because the whole darn thing that was the DAP was outside the legal books called the budget, used perhaps in untraceable and perhaps even haphazard projects.

Down here, we could never know if those billions upon billions of our tax payments actually went to useful government projects or simply into the slash funds of political parties as their war chest in the next elections.

Let me see—and now the SC actually “recognized the encouraging effects of the DAP on the country’s economy and acknowledged its laudable purposes”—was that it?

Yesterday, in our morning radio program “Karambola” on DWIZ (882 AM radio), former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno assaulted the supposed economic laudability of the DAP that encouraged its prevalent use in the past few years.

In a way, the Aquino (Part II) administration claimed the DAP was like a “fiscal stimulus” to the economy, because the government spent the money—well, the “savings” —that otherwise would have been idle.

Diokno qualified that the DAP could not be considered as “fiscal stimulus” because the program did not increase the budgetary allotment for government projects.

With or without the DAP, the government would still have the same amount of money that it could spend to stimulate the economy, which was contained in the annual budget approved by Congress.

Like it or not, the Aquino (Part II) administration resorted to the DAP because of its own failing.

In its first couple of years, the administration simply did not know how to use huge portions of the annual budget.

Thus, with the limping fiscal side, with government spending drastically slowing down, the economy faltered.

The boys of our leader, BS, came up with DAP—which was really just some sort of a forced spending—to cover for its incompetence in pursuing the projects that Congress laid down in the annual budget.

And that was supposed to be laudable?