Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno. INQUIRER file photo
MANILA, Philippines—Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno hopes to present to a people’s congress early next year the proposed law which, if signed by enough people, may lead to the scrapping of all forms of pork barrel, including the controversial Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).
“The proposed law is still in the process of perfection. Hopefully after this week, after other ideas have flowed in, we’ll be able to shape the details of the law more or less with finality and hopefully present this to a people’s congress sometime in January,” Puno said at a forum on Wednesday organized by the Chamber of Commerce of the Philippine Islands.
The gathering drew the participation of different sectors, including the Church, the academe, civil society, nongovernment organizations, business and industry, among others, who are all supportive of Puno’s move for a people’s initiative to pass a law that would abolish the pork barrel, bypassing Congress.
Puno anticipates that the campaign for a people’s initiative would be attacked in the Supreme Court.
“If you have a defective [proposed] law, we stand in danger of having a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court. That will be the end of a people’s initiative, so we will consult with constitutional experts,” he said.
“There will be a lot of slippery slopes to manage. This is the first time we are using the people’s initiative to draft a national law. Many traps abound in the process of drafting the proposed law. Let us not fall into these traps by amateurism,” he added.
During the gathering, Puno presented his own draft of the proposed law, but said that he was still waiting for the inputs of other groups.
He said there are three basic objectives that the proposed law should achieve: the restoration of the constitutional doctrines of separation of powers and checks and balance, upholding the principles of trust, transparency and accountability, and ensuring that public funds are not used for political patronage.
One of Puno’s proposals is to put an end to all so-called off-budget items.
“The one-fund concept should be enforced. All moneys should go to the Treasury and should be appropriated by Congress every year,” he said.
Puno said the proposed law should be able to reasonably restrict the power of the President to impound money allocated to different agencies. But it should also ensure that the power of the executive to safeguard national security and respond to natural disasters through lump sum appropriations is not emasculated and his power to oversee the implementation of the national budget is not unreasonably limited, he said.
Puno also proposes a prohibition against any lawmaker from interfering or intervening directly or indirectly in the faithful implementation of the national budget, such as, but not limited to, recommending any person, company, corporation or nongovernmental organization for the purpose.
“This is how the Napoles scandal happened,” Puno said, referring to detained businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind of the P10-billion pork barrel scam.