DAP controversy hounds PNoy’s execs after term ends

One of the more controversial issues faced by the Aquino administration was its implementation of the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

At present, government officials including its main implementor, Budget  Secretary Florencio Abad, are facing several plunder and graft complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman because of the DAP.

DAP came into public’s consciousness after the Senator Jinggoy Estrada, in a privilege speech in 2013, said he and 18 others senators received P50 million each from the administration.

He said the amount was given after the conviction of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2012, He, however, clarified that the money was not a bribe.

Abad admitted that the discretionary funds under the government's DAP, ranging from P50 million to P100 million, were released to senators months after Corona’s conviction.

He said the DAP releases were realigned savings meant "to ramp up spending and help accelerate economic expansion.”

Abad said six percent of the 2011 DAP disbursements and 14 percent of the 2012 releases went to legislators. He said the allocations went directly to the departments implementing the projects nominated by the lawmakers.

In July 2014, the Supreme Court struck down certain provisions of DAP as unconstitutional following the filing of nine petitions questioning its legality.

Among the acts and practices under National Budget Circular 541, which sanctions DAP, declared as unconstitutional were:

• the withdrawal of unobligated allotments from the implementing agencies, and the declaration of the withdrawn unobligated allotments and unreleased appropriations as savings prior to the end of the fiscal year and without complying with the statutory definition of savings contained in the General Appropriations Act;
• the cross-border transfers of the savings of the executive to augment the appropriations of other offices outside the executive; and
• the funding of projects, activities and programs that were not covered by any appropriation in the GAA.

Also declared as void was the portion that allowed the use of unprogrammed funds even without a certification from the National Treasurer indicating that revenue collections exceeded the revenue targets due to non-compliance with the conditions provided in the relevant GAA.

The Budget Circular 541 allowed the DBM to withdraw “unobligated allotments of agencies with low levels of obligations as of June 30, 2012, both for continuing and current allotments.”

But in February 2015, the SC partially granted the government's motion for reconsideration and removed one act from the list of previously declared as illegal.

The High Tribunal, under new ruling, finally allowed "the funding of projects, activities and programs that were not covered by any appropriation in the GAA."

"The doctrine of operative fact could dictate that all the plans and projects that stemmed or benefited from it should not be undone, as long as they were implemented in good faith,” it added.

Despite this, no less than President Benigno Aquino III had been defending DAP, even describing it as a “stimulus program that heralded our country’s economic boom.”

Aquino recently said that despite the controversies that surrounded DAP, saying it served its purpose and was beneficial to the Filipinos.

"Ang bottomline noon...nakatulong sa kababayan natin…Pa'no dapat magiging mali yun,” he said in an exclusive interview with GMA News anchor Vicky Morales in May. —NB, GMA News