Group asks SC to order probe of PDAF, DAP authors, implementors

A group asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to order the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute all the authors, proponents and implementors of both the pork barrel system and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

 

In a petition for mandamus with mandatory injunction, a group led by Greco Belgica and former Tarlac governor Margarita "Tingting" Cojuangco said Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales should likewise file a verified complaint for impeachment against President Benigno Aquino III over the DAP and PDAF controversies.

Tingting Cojuangco is Aquino's aunt.

 

The group said the Aquino administration should fully abide by the SC rulings striking down both the pork barrel system and acts under the DAP.

 

The petitioners accused the Aquino administration of being "selective" in implementing the November 2013 SC ruling on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the July 2014 SC ruling on DAP.

 

"If granted by the court, this may be the biggest casein history filed in the SC that may put all officials and individuals who misused the pork barrel funds from 1991 and DAP under investigation and possible preventive suspension," said Belgica.

 

Named respondents were Aquino, Budget Secretary Florencio "Butch" Abad, the Office of the Ombudsman, the Senate and the House of Representatives.

 

"Considering that time is of the essence and there is a great danger or risk ghat those involved would try to obstruct their investigation or prosecution, being in power, not to mention the need to put a stop to the indeterminate dilly-dallying and unwarranted excuses or dereliction of functions and duties of the concerned prosecutorial organs of the government, there is an imperious need for the honorable court to issue a writ of preliminary mandatory injunction directing them to act accordingly," read the petition.

 

In its plea, the petitioners said that despite the twin SC rulings, implicated government officials remained "scot-free."

 

"Despite the receipt of the petitioners' letter, red flags raised by the Commission on Audit and sufficient time lapse, the Ombudsman and the DOJ Secretary have miserably failed to perform their public functions and duties to the detriment of the petitioners are the general public as well as the government," read the petition. 

 

Belgica, a losing senatorial candidate in the 2013 elections, led the petition against the PDAF that was eventually granted by the high court in November 2013. 

 

In its 2013 ruling, the high court declared the PDAF Article in the 2013 General Appropriations Act and all similar provisions on the pork barrel system as illegal because it “allowed legislators to wield, in varying gradiations, non-oversight, post-enactment authority in vital areas of budget executions (thus violating) the principle of separation of powers.”

 

The SC said the pork barrel system creates a system of budgeting in which items are not “textualized into appropriations bill.” It also said this “flouts the prescribed power of presentment and in the process denies the President the power to veto items." Also declared illegal was the Community Development Fund, as well as various "congressional insertions."

 

Half a year later, in July 2014, the SC ruling declared certain acts and practices in the DAP, the National Budget Circular No. 541, and related issuances as unconstitutional. — RSJ, GMA News