Party-list rep presents ‘smoking gun’ on pork

MANILA, Philippines–A party-list lawmaker on Monday released audio recordings of Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) Chair Patricia Licuanan and Health Undersecretary Janet Garin confirming the hush-hush deals giving lawmakers access to their disallowed P20.7-billion pork barrel allocations inserted in lump sum funds in this year’s budget.

ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio used these recordings as the “smoking gun” in the fourth impeachment complaint against President Aquino filed Monday morning in the wake of the Supreme Court decisions voiding the congressional Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), described as the presidential pork barrel.

“Despite the [Supreme Court] striking down PDAF laws and unwritten PDAF-like schemes as unconstitutional, President Aquino is perpetuating the congressional pork barrel through informal practices. This continued existence of illegal pork under the direction and license of Aquino amounts to his betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution,” Tinio and 15 other signatories said in the impeachment complaint.

The complainants claimed that lawmakers continued to have access to “House pork” or lump sum funds realigned from the deleted PDAF in the 2014 budget in the departments of health, labor and employment, social welfare and development, public works and highways, CHEd and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).

“With his perpetuation of these informal practices, Aquino is the mastermind behind the congressional pork and is forcing the entire bureaucracy of the involved agencies to implement illegal acts. Aquino is committing, at the maximum, malfeasance in the performance of his official duties or, at the minimum, nonfeasance by failing to prevent the perpetuation of congressional pork,” Tinio said.

The recordings were taken during an executive session of the House committee on appropriations, where Licuanan admitted that she was “dealing and accepting the political reality that this is the PDAF,” referring to scholarship funds inserted in the agency’s budget.

Confidential info

Parañaque Rep. Gustavo Tambunting and Ako Bicol Rep. Rodel Batocabe told reporters that they would file an ethics complaint against Tinio for releasing confidential information extracted during an executive session.

Tinio’s group accused the President of “deceit” when he led the public to believe that he had enacted a “pork-less” budget this year. The group claimed that the President was “fully aware and endorsed” these outlawed informal practices.

“You (representatives) would recommend. You would tell us exactly who your candidates (scholarship students) were and we would apply our guidelines and so the COA (Commission on Audit) will have no complaints and neither would Congressman Tinio or anyone else who wants to squeal on you guys,” Licuanan said. “We have a lot of grants, we have to make this public. But in our adjustment already, priority would be given to the recommendees, the listahan (list) of the congressmen.”

Licuanan told the lawmakers about the difficulty of publicly pretending that the PDAF had been sliced off the budget.

“There are many people out there, who really think I now have P4.1-billion new scholarships. They don’t think it’s the PDAF, they don’t think it’s going to you (lawmakers) … And then I’m supposed to tell them ‘No! No! Don’t do that, because actually the congressmen are all going to get it,’” Licuanan said. “We have to go through this kind of semblance. We understand each other. I really want to cooperate.”

She also confided that her regional directors actually thought they had an extra P14 million in scholarship grants for each district so she had to tell them that this was “really for the congressmen.”

Aside from Licuanan and Garin, Tinio said, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) regional directors had issued official releases confirming that the House’s pork barrel was still existing in the DOLE’s 2014 budget; that agencies handling the pork still set aside personal lump sums for House members who could later access and disburse to their choice recipients; and that an access system and personnel had been set up in agencies to allow lawmakers to deploy this fund after enactment of the budget.

Aside from Tinio, the complainants in the impeachment case include National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera, Cynthia Lumbera, ACT Teachers chair Benjamin Valbuena, ACT Teachers secretary general Francisca Castro and her deputy Vladimer Quetua, Quezon City Public School Teachers Association president Priscilla D. Ampuan, Manila Public School Teachers Association Inc. president Louie L. Zabala, ACT Teachers secretary Jocelyn F. Martinez, ACT Teachers spokesman Cleve Kevin Robert Arguelles, ACT Teachers representative Veronica Gregorio, All University of the Philippines (UP) Workers Union president Ramon Guillermo and former president Felix Pariñas, Congress of Teachers and Educators for Nationalism and Democracy chair Gerardo Lanuza, UP Kilos Na convener Sarah Jane Raymundo, and Asian Institute of Management Union president Emmanuel Leyco.

Chaos in medical aid

Tinio also revealed a recording of Garin, a former Iloilo representative, during a meeting between officials of the Department of Health (DOH) and House members last May 20 to iron out the “chaos and confusion” on the medical assistance program (MAP) of lawmakers inserted in the 2014 budget.

Garin said the MAP would only be available to individuals recommended by lawmakers or their designated staff.

Garin explained that after their funds had been downloaded to DOH hospitals, regional medical centers and specialty hospitals, the lawmakers themselves could transact directly with the health department’s point person.

“We have a directory that will be given to you and that will be e-mailed to your offices. In that directory, there are two persons in charge of all hospitals and the name of the hospitals. So for any problem, you immediately call or text or e-mail the persons in charge of that hospital and they will automatically issue a guarantee letter direct to your office and direct to the hospital,” Garin said.

She said a third person would be added to take care of the lawmaker’s medical assistance requests to ensure that “somebody would answer your text or calls during holidays, weekend, nighttime, or early dawn.”

Garin also took note of the lawmakers’ concerns on the format of the guarantee letter, “which creates a lot of questions because it is like an indigency program of the DOH” and the “political points are lost” because a DOH official signed it. Garin said the DOH would issue a new format for the guarantee letter.

Garin said the DOH had also toned down the qualification requirements in the MAP because “the eligibility of the patient is actually your (lawmaker’s) decision.”

“We have also made a decision to do away with all walk-in patients because in the first place, it was made clear to us that these funds are not DOH funds but are actually funds of congressmen who are there to assist their constituents,” Garin said.

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TAGS: Congress, Janet Garin, Pork barrel