Category: pork barrel

A permanent solution to the broken budget System

By Benjamin E. Diokno

… Recent events show what’s wrong with the present budget system. After almost a year of budget preparation (January to July) and budget authorization (August to December), the President may choose to reorder the budget and implement it any way he wants. In 2011, the President, acting on the recommendation of the Budget Secretary, created a P72.2-billion Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

The DAP was the source of P1.1 billion in additional pork barrel a few months after the senators voted to convict former Chief Justice Renato Corona last year.

Except for four senators — Ping Lacson, Joker Arroyo, Pia Cayetano, Bongbong Marcos, and Miriam Defensor — all 20 senators received an amount ranging from P44 million (for Teofisto Guingona) to P44.5 million (for Koko Pimentel) to P92 million (for Juan Ponce Enrile) and P100 million (for Frank Drilon). The other senators each received P50 million.

Call it anything you want — a bribe, an incentive, or a reward — but clearly, this suggests that the market-clearing price of a vote convicting Corona is roughly P50 million. The congressmen who voted to impeach Corona got their own fair share. Mr. Abad has yet to reveal the list of congressmen who received the additional pork and how much.

Mr. Abad revealed that the additional pork came from DAP which was introduced in 2011 and reintroduced in 2012. Curiously, no such budget items exist in the General Appropriations Acts (GAA) of 2011 and 2012. It came about as a result of the almost limitless power of the President to slice and dice the GAA to generate large lump sums as a source of discretionary spending.

In a sense, this confirms the huge pork barrel at the discretion of the President. In 2011, as part of the P72-billion DAP, Mr. Aquino released an additional P10 billion to the National Housing Authority, P5.4 billion for the Department of Agrarian Reform, P8.6 billion for the Muslim Mindanao Autonomous Region, and augmented the Internal Revenue Allotments by P6.5 billion.

The preparation of the DAP was done at the inner sanctum of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), away from the public’s eyes and definitely without the participation of members of Congress.

The following questions might be asked: How were the new budget commitments arrived at? Where did all these monies go? Who were the service providers? Were they chosen through competitive biddings? And who were the real beneficiaries?

For 2012, the DAP reemerged. Because the budget was not carefully reviewed by Congress as before and because project implementation was still slow, the President realigned and reshaped the budget so some new projects could be funded. Some of these projects were the Department of Tourism and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) projects (P5 billion), premium payments for teachers (P4 billion), Tulay ng Pangulo (P1.8 billion), rehabilitation of regional health units (P1.96 billion), the Department of Education’s public-private partnership for school infrastructure (P4 billion) and Bangko Sentral’s capital infusion (P20 billion).

Now, it is the Commission on Audit’s responsibility to find out how these pork barrel funds — congressional and presidential — were allocated and disbursed. Was the money spent well, leaked out with the help of some corrupt NGOs (not necessarily Napoles’), or did it end up in the pockets of some legislators?

Most Filipinos, especially those who pay their taxes diligently, are furious at their leaders for misallocating, misusing, and directly partaking of their taxes.

There is hope. But only if the Aquino administration will act on some real budget reform proposals like the Budget and Impoundment Control bill and the Freedom of Information (FOI) bill. He should also commit to strengthening the budget review staffs of both Houses of Congress.

But there are reasons to despair, too. First, the President has shown his willingness to defy the overwhelming public outcry against the pork barrel. He appealed to the Supreme Court for the lifting of the TRO on the release of the balance of the Priority Development Assistance Fund for 2013.

Second, his allies in House of Representatives are equally defiant and totally unresponsive to people’s preference. The House passed the P2.268 trillion President’s Budget for 2014 with the P25.4-billion pork barrel intact — hidden in the budgets of various departments, the bulk of which will go to DPWH. The Department of Health and the Department of Labor will each get P3.69 billion, while the Department of Social Welfare and Development will receive P4.71 billion.

The Department of Education will receive an additional allocation of P1.02 billion, while the Commission on Higher Education will get P2.67 billion for scholarship programs.

The redeployment of the budget from PDAF to line ministries is illusory. But it doesn’t fool the general public. In practice, there is no guarantee that these new line items will be released by Malacañang. Under existing budget rules, the President retains his power to cherry pick, to choose which budget item to release and which to withhold.

Third, the President refuses to integrate into the regular budget the following off-budget sources of revenues: the P130-billion Malampaya Fund, the P12.5-billion motor vehicle users’ charge, the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. social fund and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s charity fund.

The current pork barrel controversy, and the perceived and real abuses of the presidential power to disburse, have given President Aquino III a rare opportunity to permanently fix the flawed budget system. Such opportunity, if seized, will strengthen the weak political institutions. Otherwise, elections will forever be available only for the rich and Congress will forever be subservient to Malacañang.

It would be a monumental tragedy if Mr. Aquino would let this opportunity to fix what’s wrong with the budget system go to waste.

Dr. Diokno is Professor of Economics at the U.P. School of Economics and was Secretary of Budget and Management.

DAPork, drilon, poverty

on top of PDAF, meron palang DAP.  Disbursement Allocation Program.  heh.  more like Da Additional Pork, huwag nang i-deny.

But Senate President Franklin Drilon said the DAP was primarily a “stimulus fund” meant to address criticisms in the first 18 months of the Aquino administration that economic growth was only half the 7-percent gross domestic product targeted by the government to make any wealth expansion meaningful to a broader base of Filipinos.

Drilon said that the P100-million DAP he received was used to build a convention center and widen roads in Iloilo as part of his home province’s bid to be one of the sites for the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference summit in 2015.

“The issue here is whether the funds were misused or not. I hope the public will listen to our explanation that we did not pocket everything,” he said. [bold mine]

WE DID NOT POCKET EVERYTHING!  ahah!  slip of the tongue?  so you did pocket some of it, yes?  like maybe 50 %? 70 %?

on teleradyo yesterday, vic lima listed the projects that chiz escudero spent his DAPork on, and on that basis pronounced him not-guilty of misusing DAPork.  excuse me, right now all i care to know of every senator and representative regarding PDAF and DAPork is, did s/he or did s/he not get commissions / kickbacks from the agencies and/or contractors concerned?  if yes, how much each time, and how much all in all over time?  what did s/he do with the money?  break it down, please.

it doesn’t matter what abigail valte is saying right now on live tv, that DAP is not pork.  what matters is that the senators thought it was pork, and they spent it like it was pork.  GOOD JOB, GUYS.

the bottom line is, we have yet to hear any porker senator or representative speaking up and saying s/he has or has not received any kickback / commission from his / her PDAF or DAPork.  so drilon’s “we did not pocket everything,” slip of the tongue or not, is quite a gem to be treasured.  at last, meron nang umamin, kahit pa hindi sinasadya ang pag-amin, kahit tila nadulas lang, puwedeng puwede na rin.

meanwhile, i imagine it’s all very busy behind the scenes for the entire network of porkers, trying to clean up acts that go back a long way, maybe even cleaning out bank accounts, holding fire sales, antedating documents, but quietly, quietly… because walls, and celfones, have ears.

meanwhile, senate prez drilon seems to think that giving up their PDAF will be enough to placate the public.

“While an actual vote has yet to be officially taken, a majority of our senators, myself included, have publicly declared that we will do away with our PDAF allocations in 2014 in response to the people cry for change,” Drilon said.

“There is no turning back as far as the pork barrel system is concerned. We have to institute these reforms in order to regain our people’s trust and conference,” he said.

if that’s trust and confidence (huy, inquirer!), the only thing that would bring back our trust and confidence in you, mr. drilon, would be if you set the example and voluntarily released for public consumption a fully documented accounting of how you spent your pork barrel from 1995 to 2007, and from 2010 to 2013, and how much went back to you as kickbacks / commissions — no doctoring, please, warts and all — and maybe your resignation as senator, unless of course you change your mind and allow napoles to testify in the senate, take the people’s side in this struggle for good governance, atbp., let the chips fall where they may.  but napoles or not, resign or not, you’d have to give back the money, of course, deducting only what expenses you can justify to the people.

the most depressing thing about the DAP exposey really is not that it distracts from the PDAF issue — because it does not, they are of a piece — but that it confirms yet again the saddest shortcoming of the aquino admin, i.e., the lack of a vision for nation, and therefore the lack of a development strategy, and a concerted effort, to achieve that vision.

asked at a presscon why the savings, the DAP fund of some 72 billion bucks, did not go instead toward poverty alleviation measures, da abigail replied, but there is so much criticism of the conditional cash transfer, referring to DSWD sec soliman’s dole-outs to the poorest of the poor.  ahahaha.  talagang yun na pala yon, next to trying to attract foreign investors to provide jobs.  so pyestang pyesta lang the government agencies and members of the senate and house of reps who are free to decide what infra to ramp up spending on, the faster the better, kanya-kanyang diskarte, in the name of “priority development assistance.”

in the context of worsening poverty countrywide, the question is, what development, and for whom?

What the pork barrel scam reveals about us

By Randy David

For more than 10 years, a good number of lawmakers, with the aid of the fixers who assisted them, were able to pocket the entire cash value of their Priority Development Assistance Fund, without anyone in government publicly protesting that there was anything wrong in what they were doing. That is astonishing. It reveals a high tolerance for corruption that contradicts all the norms of modern government enshrined in our Constitution. It exposes the feebleness of our institutional control systems.

Read on

 

 

jinggoy’s pasabog

mostly, people thought that jinggoy would defend himself and deny the kickbacks/commissions and allegations of plunder in his promised pasabog privilege speech yesterday.  but of course he didn’t — whatever his defense, he would be saving that for the ombudsman.

instead, he proceeded to blast COA, media, and other senators, bemoaning the “selective justice” that singled him out, along with enrile and revilla.  “We have been vilified in the media. Even some of our colleagues here in the Senate have already passed judgment on us.”

bakit sila lang, he whines.  well, some one(s) had to come first, yes?  it was just their bad luck / karma that their offices had many many dealings with napoles and her ghost NGOs, and that benhur luy kept records and found the courage to blow the whistle on her.  damay damay na.  besides, if we waited until every senator and representative (kahit over the last decade lang) who have received kickbacks/commissions for PDAF projects were pinpointed by the DOJ and COA, mamumuti ang mga mata natin kahihintay.  meanwhile, business as usual.

this is to say that, except for the newbies, all the senators now investigating the napoles scam in aid of legislation, and all congressmen including reps neptali gonzales, neil tupaz, and mrs butch abad, and all former senators (except joker arroyo and ping lacson) and congressmen for that matter, in and out of government (yes, shawie, including kiko), are themselves under public suspicion of receiving kickbacks/commissions over the last decade.  and that we expect the DOJ and COA to be as assiduous about investigating each and every one as expeditiously as possible.  because, really, there is no justifying kickbacks, whether 10 percent or 50 percent, whether the NGOs concerned are legit or not, because it’s stealing, plain and simple.

but in fairness, explosive na rin the allegation that senators who voted to convict corona received an additional 50M in PDAF, which means an additional 25M in kickbacks for each recipient?  senate prez drilon and dbm chief abad deny any kind of bribery at any time, while ping lacson, who didn’t get any because he always said no to pork barrel, confirms it as “incentive.”

hmm.  is it too early to say, tapos na ang maliligayang araw nila?