SC urged to issue definite ruling on fund transfers

INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—The Supreme Court on Monday was asked to issue a definite ruling against the President’s power to augment funds for a project which already has an allotted fund under the General Appropriations Act (GAA).

In a partial motion for reconsideration, the group of defeated senatorial candidate Greco Belgica through his counsels, Harry Roque, Joel Ruiz Butuyan and Roger Rayel, said that there were several instances where President Benigno Aquino III augmented funds from government savings for projects that exceeded the funds allotted under the GAA.

One of the projects they cited is the DREAM Project of the Department of Science and Technology which was given a P537.9 million appropriation under the 2011 GAA. However, Aquino augmented it by P1.6 billion.

“To do so would mean giving the President more money for a project that he failed to properly assess and evaluate how much it would cost to implement,” he said in his 23-page motion.

“To allow him to use more money than he initially determined would be required for a certain project would be to disregard the process of budgeting required to be observed under the law,” the motion stated.

They insisted that Aquino cannot augment funds for approved government projects, activities and programs in the annual GAA through the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

At the same time, they said the President cannot justify DAP’s legality by citing the Administrative Code of 1987.

They pointed out that the very same law requires that the obligations be funded from savings be incurred during a current fiscal year or previous fiscal years.

The motion also took issue with the Supreme Court’s characterization of the government’s budget process as descriptive rather than normative, charging that to do so ignores the constitutional requirement found in  Section 15 (1), Article VI of the 1987 Constitution requiring that the “form, content, and manner of preparation of the budget shall be prescribed by law.”

“Thus, and with due respect, to characterize the budget process as merely ‘descriptive, not normative’  and to propose a different ‘treatment of departments and offices granted fiscal autonomy’  is to demean the legal significance thereof as if the process described is merely directory and not mandatory,” the motion stated.