Bayan questions nomination of COA chief to SC post

MANILA, Philippines — One of the petitioners that scored a victory with the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Malacañang’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) questioned on Wednesday, the nomination of the country’s chief state auditor to the vacant seat in the high tribunal, citing her ties with the administration.

Militant umbrella group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) asserted on Wednesday, its opposition to the possible appointment of Commission on Audit (CoA) Chair Grace Pulido-Tan as the 15th Supreme Court justice, saying she had ignored calls to undertake a special audit on DAP before it was nullified.

Bayan Secretary General Renato Reyes said his group, along with the broad-based Abolish Pork Movement, asked Tan to undertake a special audit on DAP projects on Feb. 17, as she did with disbursements of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

The two-year audit, released in August 2013, found that nearly 200 members of Congress had either misused or did not account for their PDAF. The audit came as the congressional discretionary funds came under scrutiny in light of revelations tagging lawmakers and businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles in a scheme disbursing the fund to ghost projects and fake NGOs.

“Bayan views with great suspicion her appointment to the Supreme Court. She is already in the shortlist,” Reyes said when reached on Wednesday.

“On Feb. 17, the Abolish Pork Movement met with Pulido-Tan and asked her office to conduct a special audit of DAP projects. We cited several questionable projects she could start with. She refused a special audit and pointed the group to the regular audit,” he said.

Reyes said a regular audit could not be reliable “not when DAP projects were not listed properly.”

COA Chief Maria Gracia Pulido-Tan. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

“She was mandated to audit, she refused a special audit, then at some point gets rewarded with an SC post? That turn of events would be tragic,” he said.

Tan, an Aquino appointee, is on the shortlist of four nominees the Judicial and Bar Council drew up last week, garnering four votes out of the six panel members who voted during deliberations. The three other nominees on the list expected to be transmitted to President Benigno Aquino are Court of Appeals Associate Justices Apolinario Bruselas and Jose Reyes, and Quezon City Regional Trial Court Judge Reynaldo Daway.

In facing the panel last May, Tan had maintained her agency’s independence from the executive branch and that she was “not personally close” to Aquino.

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision last week rendering DAP unconstitutional for violating Congress’ exclusive power of the purse. Particularly struck down were certain acts under DAP, including the re-appropriation of Malacañang savings to projects outside the executive branch and funding of projects outside the approved national budget without certification from the national treasury.

While it did not directly recommend the prosecution of officials involved in the design and implementation of DAP, the Supreme Court said the program’s proponents must prove that the projects were enforced “in good faith” in the proper tribunal before it could invoke the protection under the doctrine of the operative fact.  The doctrine of operative fact retains the effects of an unconstitutional law prior to its declaration as illegal.

The decision also described DAP as Aquino’s usurpation of Congress’ budget powers.  The high court said Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, a former lawmaker, might have knowingly circumvented the law in coming up with the program. The high tribunal’s ruling has since spurred several impeachment complaints against Aquino and resignation calls and a plunder case against Abad.

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