Senators scored for probing own crime

SOFTBALL TREATMENT Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima (from left), Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan appear at the Senate hearing on the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program of the Aquino administration.

How can the culprits investigate their own crime?

That, in effect, is what the petitioners who challenged the legality of Malacañang’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) in the Supreme Court were saying on Friday as they slammed the Senate finance committee hearing on the economic stimulus plan on Thursday.

Former Sen. Joker Arroyo and detained Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, who last September disclosed hundreds of millions of pesos from the DAP that the Palace gave to 20 senators in 2012, observed that the “President’s Senate” was too soft on the “President’s men” during the hearing.

Arroyo wondered why the Senate finance committee did not invite critics of the DAP to the hearing to confront President Benigno Aquino’s Cabinet officials, who came in full force to defend the program that the Supreme Court had struck down.

But then, he said, it was not surprising, as the seven-hour-long hearing was a “presentation of the administration’s side.”

“The Inquirer captioned its [wallpaper] ‘All the President’s Men’ who appeared before ‘All the President’s Senate,’ with a few exceptions,” Arroyo said.

‘Cabinet meeting’

He said the hearing “looked like a Cabinet meeting,” but noted the absence of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Alfredo Caguioa.

“The ruling of the [Supreme Court] on [the] DAP is a legal question so it is remarkable that the secretary of justice and the presidential legal counsel, the highest legal officers in the executive department, were not around, or if they were, they were not asked to testify. Why?” he said.

Arroyo said it was clear from the Cabinet officials’ statements that the administration was more concerned with avoiding prosecution over the DAP after 2016 than overturning the Supreme Court’s ruling.

After all, he said, reversing the 13-0 vote is “historically remote.”

Specifically, the administration is apprehensive of being held “legally responsible and chargeable” for conceiving and implementing the DAP, Arroyo said.

‘Well scripted, rehearsed’

Estrada, detained with Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Bong Revilla at Philippine National Police headquarters in Quezon City on plunder and graft charges over the P10-billion pork barrel scam, said in a statement that the hearing “looked like a well-scripted and rehearsed production.”

“Luckily for [Budget] Secretary [Florencio] Abad, there were a lot of members of the Senate who made the task of explaining the rationale and defending the implementation  of the DAP easy for him,” Estrada said. “[Many] times, all he had to do was concur and merely agree with the defense prepared by the administration’s allies.”

Greco Belgica, who lost the 2013 senatorial election and one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court, said the “air time” given to the Cabinet officials to defend the program allowed them to justify “the crime committed by the proponent,” defeating the hearing’s purpose of determining the truth about the DAP.

“The evidence ought to be brought to the proper forum for investigation and prosecution in court—the Commission on Audit and the Ombudsman—not [to] the Senate, because [the senators] are recipients of DAP [funds and] that makes them part of the crimes committed,” Belgica said.

He accused Malacañang and the Senate of conspiring to proceed with the DAP, which pooled savings and realigned them to programs of other agencies not approved in the General Appropriations Act.

Surrender to executive

Belgica’s lawyer Harry Roque called the Senate’s demeanor during the hearing an act of surrendering its function of checking a coequal branch of government.

“[It is] sad that the Senate abdicated its oversight functions and opted to be a spin doctor for Malacañang. A subservient Senate is a threat to democracy,” Roque said.

Voting 13-0, the Supreme Court struck down the DAP on July 1, saying the program’s sponsors must prove good faith in the proper tribunal, implying the possible liability of those behind the plan.

The Senate hearing on Thursday focused on Abad, with the senators asking him to explain the DAP and the projects selected for financing from the program.

Belgica said the points raised by Abad and other Cabinet members were “the same arguments” that Malacañang presented in the Supreme Court in responding to nine petitions brought against the DAP.

“The crime was committed through collusion between the executive and the Senate. How can there be credibility? How can [the senators] investigate when they are the culprits?” Belgica said.

Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption  founding chair Dante Jimenez agreed with Belgica, saying the Ombudsman must assemble an independent team “representing taxpayers composed of private auditors, accountants, lawyers and civil society groups not connected with any political parties” to look into the DAP disbursements.

“The Senate investigation of Abad’s DAP is a classic case of you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Another waste of taxpayer money in the guise of an investigation in aid of legislation,” Jimenez, also a petitioner against the DAP, said.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. noted how Palace allies in the Senate, particularly Senate President Franklin Drilon and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, defended Malacañang as they questioned Abad.

“Say goodbye to checks and balances now that senators like Drilon and Trillanes are actively lawyering for Abad and the Aquino regime,” Reyes said.

“The irony seems to be lost on the senators. [The] DAP was used to usurp the powers of Congress to approve the budget. These senators are justifying [the] usurpation, as well as justifying the pork barrel system where politicians depend on the good graces of the executive in order to get projects and services,” he said.

Drilon-Abad exchange

Reyes was particularly angry over the exchange between Drilon and Abad, where the Senate President threw questions that drew answers along Malacañang’s defense line.

Drilon helped Abad  say that the DAP was covered by  the 1987 Administrative Code and a constitutional provision that allows the heads of the three branches of government to augment any item in their budgets with savings.

“The [exchange] between Abad and Drilon seems scripted to say the least and was designed to whitewash [President] Aquino’s violations of the law. The Senate hearing was painful to watch and highlight[ed] again the rottenness of our system, one that has been corrupted by pork,” said Reyes, whose group supports moves for Mr. Aquino’s impeachment.

Lost chance of redemption

Estrada, ordered suspended by the Sandiganbayan for 90 days after his indictment and arrest in June, said the Senate lost another chance to redeem itself and to rise above partisan politics.

But he praised his fellow oppositionist, junior Sen. Nancy Binay, who he said asked Abad probing questions.

“Save for a few colleagues, like Sen. Nancy Binay who may be a neophyte lawmaker and is not a lawyer but studied the DAP issues and facts lengthily, asked tough questions and pressed for straight answers, the Senate [looked] like a rah-rah squad for the budget department,” Estrada said.

Among the DAP issues raised by Binay, daughter of Vice President Jejomar Binay, was the allocation of P70 million to stem cell research when many hospitals lacked equipment and beds.

Health Secretary Enrique Ona told her that the stem cell research project, which is handled by the Lung Center of the Philippines, was aimed at the preventive, promotive, curative and even rehabilitation needs of the entire health sector.

On Friday, Ona told reporters that he was disappointed with Binay for questioning instead of supporting the research project.

He said the project offered Filipino doctors the opportunity to do all types of research, not just on stem cell.

“Filipinos can jump-start medical research, comparing it with the research capacity of other countries—that’s what I would like to hear from her,” Ona said.

“And I also wish to tell her, I hope she increases the funds for the various research being conducted by our doctors,” he added. “Because if not, these doctors may just opt to work in other countries.”

Reacting to the criticisms, Sen. Francis Escudero, chair of the finance committee, said over ANC that nobody could dictate to the senators what questions to ask.

What is important is that the public heard the Cabinet’s explanation of the DAP, he said.

In Thursday’s hearing, Abad wondered why the justices suggested criminal, civil and administrative liability of the implementers when they acknowledged the DAP’s positive results for the country’s economy.

Arroyo said the Supreme Court did not make a finding of fact “as to who are accountable” for the program and its operators. Its ruling is that the DAP, as a program, is “constitutionally infirm,” he said.

“The creators, the implementers, the beneficiaries of [the] DAP are uneasy that come May 2016, if the administration does not succeed in getting its candidate for president elected, they may be in trouble,” he said.

Escaping accountability

Arroyo said the administration officials sought to plug the loophole and escape accountability.

Proof of this was the continuing emphasis on “the good projects, the benefits, the supposed transparency, that past administrations did the same thing; that there was basis for launching the DAP, all designed to show good faith, or an honest mistake,” he said.

“One wonders how they can persuade the [Supreme Court]. The amount expended via [the] DAP is just too humongous to ignore, the secrecy that ushered its start, its role in the impeachment [of former Chief Justice Renato Corona] all being discussed in public is just too hard to ignore,” he said.

20 senators got DAP funds

Abad has admitted that 20 senators received DAP allocations for their pet projects after the Senate convicted Corona in May 2012 of dishonesty in his financial disclosure. With reports from Nikko Dizon and Tina G. Santos

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