Abad gave DAP to all, except poor veterans

Senator Trillanes makes a poor case for the illegalized presidential pork barrel in saying that Malacañang legal aides misread it. Budget Sec. Florencio Abad, concocter of that Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), is a lawyer. He used to be secretary of education and of agrarian reform. As five-term congressman, he once headed the select appropriations committee. He knew that in government there can be no disbursements without appropriations, no fund juggling, and no cross-branch money transfers. If ex-Navy officer Trillanes thinks Abad faultless, he can tell it to the Marines.

Trillanes makes a frailer defense in saying that Abad concocted the DAP in good faith. Sure, that 2011-2012 spending was supposed to be for poverty alleviation. Yet Abad cannot show how the P142 billion (or is it P157 billion or P177 billion, as he keeps changing his figures; his latest version is P136 billion) lessened penury.

What has been amply reported is that DAP went to impoverishing ends: as additional congressional pork barrels. About P24 billion a year – P200 million per senator, P70 million per congressman – used to be allotted as Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). In the 27 years it was in force (until illegalized too last Nov.), the PDAF never uplifted the poor. Poverty stayed the same at 27 percent, but grew in real numbers as the population swelled. Hunger worsened. Joblessness and underemployment went down some digits, but also actually rose in real terms. Eleven million Filipinos now must eke out a living abroad, since there’s no gainful work at home. Millions more adults are idle because the PDAF, from state audits, just kept going to self-promoting projects and kickbacks of crooked political dynasts. Going by audits, none went to economic stimulants that generate jobs, cheapen foods, and improve health.

Yet, P13 billion in DAP went to Congress as PDAF-like lump sums. Meaning, more of the same sleazy spending to maintain the dynasts.

Going by whistleblower Benhur Luy’s ledgers, P425 million of it ended up in bogus projects and NGOs of “pork” fixer Janet Lim Napoles. If so, then at least half became kickbacks of lawmakers, and a third to implementing Executive agency heads. That’s how the Dept. of Justice outlines Napoles’ modus operandi.

Breakdown of the P425 million in DAP: P100 million each courtesy of Senators Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla, and Bongbong Marcos; P70 million from Tito Sotto; and P55 million from Juan Ponce Enrile. The DOJ is sure that Estrada, Revilla, and Enrile plundered their congressional “pork” in 2007-2009; presumably it thinks the same of the trio’s DAP.

Audits reveal that 14 more senators and 188 congressmen looted their PDAFs in 2007-2009, via dozens of other fake NGOs of Napoles’ rival fixers. Most of them, or their dynastic kin, partook of Congress’ slice of the DAP in 2011-2012. They could only have looted too the unexpected windfall from Abad.

The DAP was withheld, however, from one truly penurious sector: veterans’ kin and police retirees. Having once led a military mutiny against slimy officers, Trillanes might want to look into this gross neglect by Abad.

For years thousands of spouses and heirs of war vets have been begging the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office (PVAO) for their pensions. The PVAO can’t do anything, as it merely is the releasing agency. Only pensions to living vets and long confirmed widows are up to date. Recent widows and heirs have been validated, the roster long submitted to Abad’s office for funding. But he has instructed his staff to distrust the PVAO list, and instead re-verify each new claimant. Abad can’t afford to throw away a few measly hundreds a month to those panhandling vets’ widows and heirs, only billions to fellow political elitists.

A parallel case is that of retirees of the old Integrated National Police. Adjuncts of the defunct Constabulary and precursors of today’s Philippine National Police, they had left the service in the ‘70s to ‘90s, and were paid paltry pensions. Twelve years ago they sought pension upgrades to that of the PNP – and were upheld in the Supreme Court in 2007. The DBM was ordered back then, and again by a lower court in Feb. 2014, to pay the retirees’ pension differentials. The list of pensioners and amounts due has long been submitted too to the DBM. Yet they were not among Abad’s DAP beneficiaries. For, how can pensions to dying retirees stimulate the economy as much as imaginary projects and NGOs?

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