MANILA, Philippines—Kabataan Rep. Terry Ridon on Monday urged his peers to come clean and declare whether they received extra funds from President Aquino’s pork barrel, called the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), before, during and after the impeachment of then Chief Justice Renato Corona.
Ridon said Budget Secretary Florencio Abad was attempting to salvage the DAP, whose constitutionality has been questioned in the Supreme Court, by stressing that legislators would not admit they were bribed using the spending program to impeach Corona.
“We therefore challenge those in the know to come out and speak, for the public truly deserves to know the truth,” said the youth leader who is serving his first year as representative.
“The best defense for the DAP is full disclosure so that the public and the members of Congress will know for themselves who got DAP funds. This will answer once and for all who got more, who got less and who got none from the DAP,” Ridon said.
In an interview with Inquirer Radio dzIQ, Abad said: “The lawmakers themselves should be asked about whether government money was used to guarantee the conviction of Corona. Were they bribed to vote? In my opinion, nobody will say they were bribed, these are allegations that are tainted with politics for a different agenda.”
The secretary of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) also reiterated that no DAP funds went directly to the lawmakers since its creation in October 2011.
Ridon said the DAP could not be seen without any tinge of politics because “the way the events turned out clearly dispute Abad’s claim that DAP fund releases are apolitical.”
“Here are the facts: DAP releases were approved by Oct. 12, and the House filed its impeachment complaint against Corona by Dec. 12, exactly two months after. What we really need to know is what transpired in that two-month gap. More details on this exact period would surely open the proverbial can of worms,” Ridon said.
“The fact that DBM released additional funds for legislators before, during, and after the Corona impeachment trial shows how politically motivated the disbursement of funds were,” Ridon said.
Ridon noted that a DBM memorandum on the DAP in October 2011 showed that P6.5 billion was initially allocated as augmentation for the lawmakers’ pork barrel system, the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). Abad claimed that this was a “clerical error.”
Inquirer sources said that representatives received as much as P5 billion in DAP funds before, during and after the proceedings against Corona with most members getting at least P10 million each—P7 million for farm-to-market road projects and P3 million for soft projects such as milk feeding programs—while House leaders and members of the impeachment team got between P25 and P50 million each.
Navotas Rep. Tobias Tiangco called on Abad to reveal the amount and date of DAP releases to lawmakers on top of their annual PDAF allocations—P200 million for senators and P70 million for representatives—from 2011 to 2012, the period covering the planning, execution and conclusion of the administration-backed plan to oust Corona.
Corona was convicted in May 2012 for dishonesty in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.
DBM ignores requests
Tiangco said he had been asking Abad for the list of DAP recipients as early as September last year, but the DBM had only released a partial list of recipients from the Senate and not one from the House.
“It’s been six months, but up to now they don’t want to bring out the list. So obviously they are hiding something,” he said.
The secretary general of the United Nationalist Alliance also said Abad should share the blame if funds from the DAP—a little-known impounding mechanism for government savings initiated in October 2011 that came to light after a privilege speech by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada in September 2013—were funneled to fake nongovernment organizations (NGOs).
Tiangco said that Abad “cannot feign innocence or wash his hands of any responsibility on DAP” because two government agencies—the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) and National Livelihood Development Corp. (NLDC)—had resisted being used as conduits for DAP funds for lawmakers.
The DBM initially gave P475 million in DAP funds meant for six senators—Estrada, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Ramon Revilla Jr., Vicente Sotto III, Juan Ponce Enrile and Loren Legarda—to the DAR in December 2011.
But Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes turned down the DBM release papers because his agency still had P1 billion in unused, lump-sum funds from the general budget at that point and he wanted all funds to go through a rigid application process.
Also, De los Reyes said the DAR was then under investigation for the P900 million from the Malampaya Fund that went to bogus NGOs controlled by Janet Lim-Napoles in 2009 instead of storm victims. Napoles is the alleged brains behind a P10-billion racket that channeled PDAF allocations into ghost projects and kickbacks.
Bogus NGOs
The DAR’s refusal supposedly prompted the DBM to issue new special allotment release orders (Saros) and notices of cash allocations (NCAs) worth P370 million for Estrada, Marcos, Revilla and Sotto to the NLDC in March 2012.
NLDC, a state-owned microlending firm that is also under investigation for releasing more than P1 billion in pork barrel funds to Napoles’ NGOs from 2007 to 2010, appealed to the DBM that it did not want any part of the funds that it thought were PDAF allocations.
Official documents secured by the Inquirer revealed that the DBM ignored the NLDC plea and merely clarified that the funds meant for the four senators were DAP and not PDAF. The P370 million DAP funds ended up with Napoles NGOs.
“Abad cannot deny that the government funds that ended up in the hands of fake NGOs were released with the imprimatur of his office. Abad is equally guilty whether he acted as budget secretary, a conduit or an agent. I am cocksure that Abad has a hand in all releases from the DAP since it is hard to believe that he does not know anything about it being the budget secretary in charge of the government’s cash box,” Tiangco said.
In a text message, Abad said: “Where the legislator wants to realign the project is between him and the implementing agency (IA). If the IA was initially hesitant but eventually agreed to implement the project, you will have to ask the IA and the legislator what happened. When we reissue a Saro, it is always with the condition that budgetary, accounting and auditing rules are complied with. If not they will have to answer to the COA (Commission on Audit) eventually.”
Tiangco, who was also a member of the 15th Congress that impeached Corona, said he did not receive a centavo on top of his P70-million annual PDAF allocation amid Abad’s claim that DAP funds were released “irrespective of whether the representatives were for or against the impeachment.”