PDAF graft cases stand to lose?

It’s business as usual. The sessions of both chambers of the 16th Congress resumed yesterday after several days break due to typhoon and holidays. The first order of business at the Senate was to start the first public hearing on the proposed 2014 General Appropriations Act (GAA), or the budget bill.

At the House of Representatives, the various sub-committees on appropriations resumed their respective public hearings on the proposed budgets per government agencies for next year.

The budget hearings in Congress are now under much closer public scrutiny especially a day after people from all walks of life joined the indignation rallies held in several parts of the country against the “pork-barrel” scam scandals, the largest of which took place at Luneta Park.

But what puzzles me was how the senators yesterday quickly endorsed for plenary approval the proposed P202.2 billion budget next year of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). With prodding from Senate President Franklin Drilon, Senate finance committee chairman Sen. Francis Escudero moved for the plenary approval of the DPWH budget in a jiffy.

After a handful of senators asked questions from DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson, the DPWH budget for 2014 was approved, the first agency going through with obvious ease at the Senate budget hearing. The irony of this is Escudero a few days earlier filed a Senate Resolution calling for the abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). Pray tell why the Senate did such hasty approval when most of these PDAF usually go into the DPWH budget?

On the other hand, the proposed budget for 2014 of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) was presented at the House public hearing yesterday. Militant students who were able to attend it boldly stood up to denounce the budget cuts on at least 74 state universities and colleges (SUCs). If not for them, the congressmen perhaps would not have taken up their cause. 

In fact, if I heard it right, no less than the University of the Philippines (UP) will have as much as P1 billion cut in their 2014 budget. Do we need another UP student who cannot afford to pay tuition to commit suicide again?

President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III earlier submitted his administration’s proposed P2.68-trillion budget for next year just one week after he delivered his state of the nation address (SONA). This was long before the alleged “pork-barrel” scandals came out in full steam. 

Being a former congressman for three consecutive terms and a senator for three years, President Aquino initially defended the retention of P25 billion worth of pork-barrel allocation under the PDAF included in the 2014 budget bill. This amount represented the lump-sum allocations of P200 million each for senators and P70 million for each of the House members, including party-list representatives.

But when push came to shove, P-Noy was forced to heed the growing public clamor against the PDAF. Three days before the anti-pork rally in Luneta, P-Noy hastily called a press conference at Malacañang Palace to declare: “It is time to abolish the PDAF.” It was too late too soon as it failed to stem the rising tide to hold the rally against the pork-barrel funds.

The anti-pork barrel sentiments hit fever pitch on allegations that businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles cornered huge amounts of PDAF and channeled them to “bogus” non-government organizations (NGOs). Worse, Napoles and her cohorts were able to cash in on the public funds purportedly with the endorsement of these NGOs by some senators and congressmen.

The allegations gained credence after Commission on Audit (COA) chairman Grace Pulido-Tan came out with her own press conference. Based from the audit of the PDAF during the 15th Congress from 2007 to 2009, Pulido-Tan released to the media their findings of questionable PDAF releases to bogus NGOs and foundations, some of which included certain senators and congressmen as incorporators. 

But it turned out later, the COA audit churned out some erroneous findings on PDAF releases. The most controversial error was that of the alleged P3 billion worth of PDAF given to former congressman and now Compostela Vice Gov. Manuel “Way” Kurat Zamora. An aghast Way Kurat promised to jail himself if COA would be able to prove he got such amount of PDAF. 

It took several days before Department of Budget and Management (DBM) secretary Florencio Abad came out and cleared Way Kurat on this alleged P3 billion PDAF releases.

There was also the P20 million PDAF supposedly given to a “ghost” congressman earlier identified by COA report as “Luis” Abalos. But it turned to be a clerical error from documents gathered from the DBM. It was the PDAF given to former congressman and now Mandaluyong City Mayor Benhur Abalos. By the way, the PDAF-funded project for persons with disability even earned the Galing Pook Award from the Department of the Interior and Local Government.  

The COA chairman did not at least explain to the public — not to apologize if she believes the two former congressmen have liabilities to some extent — how these very serious accusations fell flat on her face. But alas, we did not hear anything from her. In fact, when confronted subsequently in TV interviews, Pulido-Tan adamantly insisted it was not COA that erred but the errors came from DBM documents as submitted to them.

If that’s how these supposed evidence on PDAF corruption were gathered, how would such cases prosper in courts?  

Yesterday, the team of Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Leila de Lima and Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales held a joint press conference to announce the start of their investigations into the reported PDAF anomalies, including those based from the COA report. 

Incidentally, Palace spokesman Edwin Lacierda likened the three female officials (De Lima, Carpio-Morales and Pulido-Tan) to the Three Furies of Greek mythology — the goddesses who render divine justice against those who wronged the people.

The DOJ and the Ombudsman are leading the Inter-Agency Anti-Graft Coordinating Council that P-Noy created to go after the PDAF anomalies and to convict the culprits within his term. But this early, however, some of the cases obviously stand on loose ground.