MANILA, Philippines — The Supreme Court will resume on Tuesday the oral arguments on the Aquino administration’s controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), with Malacañang expected to mount a strong defense for its legality and constitutionality.
It will be the turn of Solicitor General Francis Jardeleza to speak before the 15-member high court on the DAP.
On Nov. 19, the high court heard the lawyers of nine petitioners opposing the DAP, said to be the presidential pork barrel.
The petitioners questioned the legality and constitutionality of the DAP, which Malacañang said was created in 2011 from savings of the executive and spent to pump prime the economy.
But during the first hearing on the DAP last month, Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio said he had not seen an official document that showed President Aquino realigning government savings for the DAP and authorizing the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to do it.
The DBM came out with National Budget Circular No. 541 in 2012, which Carpio said “regularized” the DAP’s use in 2011 and 2012. There was no document for the DAP in 2013 but Malacañang still continued the program.
Carpio said the funds, where the DAP was taken from by the DBM, could not qualify as savings as defined under the law. The department was drawing the funds from unobligated allotments, dividends of government-owned and -controlled corporations, proceeds from sales of assets and unprogrammed funds in the national budget.
The high court is looking into the DAP after it ruled last month that the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the pork barrel of lawmakers, was unconstitutional.
The Department of Justice has recommended 34 persons to be charged in the Office of the Ombudsman for the alleged misuse of their PDAF.
One of them, former Oriental Mindoro Rep. Rodolfo Valencia, asked Justice Secretary Leila de Lima to reinvestigate his inclusion. He also sought a meeting with her to present his side and show his evidence.
In a Dec. 2 letter to De Lima, Valencia said that as early as February this year, he had told the Commission on Audit that his signature had been forged and falsified in several documents.
The documents showed that P2 million of his PDAF was coursed through a nongovernment organization linked to Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind behind the P10-billion pork barrel scam.
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High court to hear oral arguments on DAP