Aquino admin's reforms fail to placate anti-PDAF petitioners

Reforms implemented by the Aquino administration regarding the use of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) have failed to placate those who are challenging the pork barrel system's legality before the Supreme Court.

Answering the consolidated comment submitted last week by the Office of the Solicitor General, petitioners led by former Manila councilor Greco Belgica insisted that their petition is questioning the constitutionality of the PDAF and other discretionary funds, and not whether these funds have been properly released.

In the comment to the four petitions filed against the PDAF and the Malampaya gas fund systems, the government through the OSG insisted that the reported abuses of the PDAF was a problem of implementation and not of constitutionality.

The OSG added that the remedy for the problem lies "elswhere," like the prosecution of guilty parties by the executive or the Ombudsman or through statutory amendment, and not by intervention of the high court.

As for the Malampaya fund, the OSG argued that while these funds are "off-budget" funds, these are still subjected to transparency and accountability measures cited under the 1987 Philippine Constitution.

The OSG, which represents the government in cases, also said the TRO should already be "lifted or partially lifted" since the government has already started instituting reforms in the budget process.

"Reforms are already underway. The President has officially declared his intent to abolish the PDAF and has specified his plan to replace the PDAF with a defined program of line item-budgeting," the OSG said.

"Before the TRO was issued... the President had already withheld the release of the remaining PDAF under the 2013 GAA and outlined reforms to the budget," it added.

The OSG also stressed that even Congress is already in the "process of adopting a limited menu with more stringent qualifications for line item projects in the 2014 budget," insisting that the PDAF for 2014 will no longer be given to lawmakers as lump sum allocations.

In response, however, Belgica's group insisted that the purported moves for the abolition and reform "do not touch upon the core question of whether the system the PDAF forms part of is constitutional to begin with."

"At best, they rely on the public respondents' own flawed premise that the issue is only a 'matter of implementation' and as such only requires the remedy of political reform by the political branches," the petitioners said.

The group said the "solution" to a question of constitutionality is not through any "abolition or reform," but rather through a determination by the Supreme Court.

"This is not a race or a contest to determine 'progressive solutions,' it is a test of a system based on constitutional principles - a question that the honorable court is not just best suited for but directly mandated by the Constitution to do," the petitioners said.

They added that the "commitment or actual abolition of the PDAF as a supervening event should not prevent the honorable court from formulating controlling principles on the constitutional scope of appropriation powers and in exercising its educative function in order to guide the public and the other two branches."

The petitioner asked the high court to order the Office of the Executive Secretary and the Department of Budget and Management to release both to the Commission on Audit and the public a list of all legislators who have availed of PDAFs from 2003 to 2013, as well as details on the executive branch's lump sum and discretionary funds, including proceeeds from the Malampaya gas project, remittances from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp and the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office or the executive branch's Social Fund, also from 2003 to 2013.

The petitioners said the lists and reports to be made public should "specify the use of the funds, the project or activity and the recepient entities or individuals and all pertinent data."

The executive branch should also start providing detailed reports of the expenditure of all off-budget, lump sum, and discretionary funds in the annual National Expenditure Program submitted to Congress.

In their petition, Belgica had said the pork barrel system "violates the constitutional limits given to the executive and the legislative because they are able to spend money beyond what is approved by Congress since these are lump sum funds."

Named respondents in the petitions were Senate President Franklin Drilon and House Speaker Belmonte.

Senators can get up to P200 million each in PDAF every year, while members of the House of Representatives are entitled to P70 million each.

The controversial PDAF system was thrown into the spotlight recently following allegations of misuse by several lawmakers through a supposed scam that involves bogus non-government organizations. -- Mark Merueñas/KBK, GMA News