2017 budget ‘cholesterol-free’—Palace

Senators and congressmen applaud as President Duterte signs the General Appropriations Act for 2017 in this photo taken on Dec. 22, 2016. FILE PHOTO FROM MALACAÑANG

President Rodrigo Duterte’s first national budget is “cholesterol-free,” Malacañang insisted on Monday as it rejected Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson’s claim that the Duterte administration has resuscitated the graft-plagued pork barrel system.

READ: Palace, Congress hit for keeping pork

Ernesto Abella, the President’s spokesperson, said this year’s budget of P3.35 trillion complied with the Supreme Court’s decision, which declared as unconstitutional the discretionary funds for lawmakers, officially called  Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

“There are no pork barrel items in the 2017 budget. (It) is compliant to the SC ruling on PDAF,” Abella said in a text message to the INQUIRER.

Mr. Duterte has been very vocal against the pork barrel, which some corrupt senators and congressmen used to fatten their own wallets by endorsing spurious PDAF-funded projects and to promote patronage politics.

But Lacson accused the President and his allies in Congress of conniving with each other to clandestinely revive PDAF, which they allegedly did “without official records or communication.”

“To put a veil on their postenactment participation, in connivance with those in the executive branch, the legislators now identify their projects prior to submission of the budget to Congress, during the budget deliberations and even during the bicameral conference,” Lacson told the INQUIRER in an interview.

READ: Lacson to question pork in budget in SC

The senator said certain favored congressmen received as much as P3 billion in pork allocations while some of his colleagues in the Senate could access up to P300 million in PDAF.

Lacson, who has consistently ditched his pork barrel allocations, showed a copy of “pro forma files,” or standard documents on which congressmen identify their projects.

The documents would then be presented to the Department of Budget and Management for inclusion in the National Expenditure Program prepared by the Palace.

While it was widely regarded an open secret in the bureaucracy, corruption in the use of pork barrel came to the fore when whistleblower Benhur Luy spilled the beans on his cousin, businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

Napoles allegedly utilized her vast network of friends in the Senate and the House to access about P10 billion in PDAF through fake nongovernment organizations, which implemented fraudulent government projects./rga