‘Operation Lihis’ and the DAP

After the siege of Zamboanga City by elements of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) failed to divert public attention from the pork barrel fund scam, it is said that “Operation Lihis” (lihis, Tagalog for divert) exposed the “bribery” of senators who voted to convict former chief justice Renato Corona. The supposed aim is to scorn Malacañang with the same brush that tarred lawmakers and other government officials in the pork barrel funds scam.

To recall, it was in December 2011 when the Senate convened as impeachment court and tried Corona for his failure to disclose to the public his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth. The trial was swift, with the guilty verdict coming down on May 29, 2012. Of 23 senator judges, 20 found Corona guilty. Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Joker Arroyo and Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. found him not guilty.

Sen. Jose Estrada exposed the supposed payoffs in a privilege speech although he did not categorically state the senators were bribed for letting the axe fall on Corona. In any case, if the “bombshell” was meant to distract the attention of the public from the pork fund mess, I don’t think that is happening right now, not when the Department of Justice filed plunder charges against former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and ex-Cabinet men and several others for the misuse of the P900 million Malampaya gas fund.

The cases followed the first round of plunder charges filed last month against Senators Estrada, Ramon Revilla, Jr. and Juan Ponce Enrile for allegedly pocketing hundreds of millions of pesos in pork barrel funds through ghost and overpriced projects in collusion with businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles.

In both plunder charges, Napoles’ network of bogus organizations is tagged as the conduit of billions of government funds that went into the pockets of corrupt politicians and co-conspirators in agencies under the executive department notably the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and the Department of Agriculture (DA).

Now comes the Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP. It is being linked to Corona’s ouster through additional allocation given to senators who voted for the conviction of the former chief justice. Sen. Estrada appeared hesitant to accuse Malacañang of bribery because there’s a rub. Marcos, who voted to acquit Corona received DAP funds. Nevertheless, Jinggoy’s timeline of the additional allocation was meant to create doubts in the minds of the people.

Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad was constrained to explain the animal that is DAP in a series of media interviews. According to the budget secretary, the DAP is an economic stimulus, “meant to fast-track public spending and push economic growth.”

More than P15 billion have already been approved for release in 2013, most of it for the modernization program of the Philippine National Police, the redevelopment of Roxas Boulevard and projects for the rehabilitation of Compostela Valley and Davao Oriental which had been badly hit by typhoons in previous years.

Abad later clarified that funds given to senators as mentioned by Sen. Jinggoy were part of DAP. The budget secretary emphasized the funds were savings or stand-by funds and appropriated in response to requests made by lawmakers for certain projects. As if to underscore the DAP is not another form of pork barrel, Abad said DAP funds were not handed out to senators but to proper implementing agencies.

This is where Abad’s explanation got complicated because Senate President Franklin Drilon said in an interview with Rappler that the DAP is an “off budget item,” and as such is not directly released to line agencies. Drilon did not elaborate, but I think he meant that the funds were released to local government units. If at all, senators who received DAP money like Drilon, Jinggoy, Marcos, Revilla and Vicente Sotto had broad discretionary powers over the said funds.

The Aquino administration is saying there is no more need to carry out the program. I guess that should quiet down opposition quarters pressing for a political resolution to the issue, that is, by impeaching President Noynoy Aquino but I agree with former senator Joker Arroyo’s stance that not all government missteps should be decided by impeachment.

Nevertheless, the DAP has to be investigated because it involves government money.

To paraphrase Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago who believes the Supreme Court needs to address the issue, “It is no defense to say that the senators spent the DAP on good projects.”

The question is: “Did you read your Constitution?”