Petitioners want high court to give more teeth to DAP decision

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MANILA, Philippines–The group of petitioners that filed a case against the government’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) said Monday it would file a motion for partial reconsideration of the Supreme Court’s July 1 decision declaring the economic stimulus facility unconstitutional.

Harry Roque, counsel of the petitioners led by former Manila Councilor Greco Belgica, said in a statement Monday they wanted to “force the Supreme Court to implement the laws that require that savings can

only be used for augmentation of deficient appropriations.”

“While the decision categorically said that ‘an appropriation for any program, activity or project must first be determined to be deficient before it could be augmented from savings,’ in the dispositive portion, the court declared unconstitutional only the funding of projects, activities and programs that were not covered by any appropriation in the General Appropriations Act (GAA).”

Roque said there was a need to clearly define what constituted actual deficit “so as to be able to make valid augmentations as this may be exploited by those responsible for the DAP as their escape mechanism to avoid criminal and administrative liability.”

“Further, this may be relied upon as authority in the future to provide for measly funding for many items in the GAA just for the purpose of providing ‘appropriations cover’ where ‘savings’ may be used,” he added.

Roque said the court “did not actually give life to the constitutional requirement for valid augmentation” and did not implement the provisions of the GAA for 2011, 2012 and 2013 and the second paragraph of Section 44 of Presidential Decree No. 1177, which required that for any augmentation to be valid, there must be an actual deficiency in an existing appropriation and not merely the existence of an appropriation cover.

“This is a disturbing part of the decision as it seems that the discussion and examples cited by the Supreme Court on the subject focused only on the lack of appropriation cover,” Roque added.

He said the court, for instance, cited the Disaster Risk, Exposure, Assessment and Mitigation (Dream) project of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) with the following expenditures under the DAP: personnel services—P43.5 million; maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE)—P1.164 billion; and capital outlays—P391.9 million.

Roque said the original appropriations under the 2011 GAA were personnel services—0; MOOE—P537.9 million; and capital outlays—0.

If the decision were followed, Roque said the only questionable augmentations in the example were those relating to personnel services and capital outlays.

However, he pointed out that the money spent for MOOE under the Dream-DAP was P1.164 billion or almost three times the amount spent for personnel services and capital outlays (P435 million) and more than twice the P537 million originally appropriated for MOOE.

It was “clear,” he said, that on the items for personnel services and capital outlays, there was no valid augmentation as there were no appropriations to be augmented.

“What is not so clear, however, is whether there was actual deficiency for the MOOE that required augmentation,” he added.