Taking the heat

Malacañang said President Aquino is taking full responsibility for the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

His officials behind the DAP should take some of the heat off their boss by resigning irrevocably.

Although P-Noy is barred from seeking a second term, he still needs to ease the heat generated by the DAP to get his work done in the second half of his term.

Shielding his officials is hurting P-Noy’s main strength: his anti-corruption campaign. Official statistics show that he has barely made a dent in easing poverty and unemployment. Investment grade for the country is not translating into actual job-generating investments. The investment grade, like sustained strong business confidence under his watch, owes much not to real institutional reforms but to the so-called P-Noy factor: the perception that with a clean official at the top, anti-corruption efforts could trickle down to the levels of the bureaucracy that deal with investments.

International surveys show that in the past four years, the country has barely improved in terms of ease in doing business. In terms of actual amounts of foreign direct investment, the country also remains a laggard among Southeast Asia’s major economies.

But a lot can still be achieved in two years in terms of reforms, poverty alleviation, job generation and luring of investments and tourists.

P-Noy can’t afford to have the momentum of reforms derailed by compromising his biggest asset, which is his personal integrity (or perceptions of it, as his critics like to emphasize) by protecting his friends.

Since assuming power, this has been P-Noy’s weakness. Getting him to fire so-called KKK – kaibigan, kaklase, kabarilan – or friends, classmates and shooting buddies (and their own KKK) who become embroiled in questionable activities has always been like amputating a gangrened limb.

Consider the way he’s easing out Proceso Alcala as agriculture chief by emasculation, transferring the secretary’s powers to new adviser Francis Pangilinan. The new office is an additional expense to taxpayers, and so far it hasn’t resulted in lower prices for rice, garlic, ginger, sugar and other commodities. Why can’t P-Noy just fire Alcala? And can’t Alcala get the message and quit?

Consider how P-Noy held on to Rico Puno before finally easing him out of the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) as undersecretary in charge of the police. Was Puno shunted to a sinecure in the Manila Economic and Cultural Office? Then there’s Virginia Torres, formerly of the Land Transportation Office, videotaped using her suki card in slot machines.

There’s Al Vitangcol III, protégé of P-Noy’s BFF Mar Roxas. Vitangcol got fired as manager of the Metro Rail Transit only after reports came out that his uncle-in-law was an incorporator of a hurriedly organized, undercapitalized local firm that bagged a multimillion-peso train maintenance deal with the MRT.

The Office of the Ombudsman, acting on its own, has launched an investigation of Vitangcol. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, found the need to clear with P-Noy the recommendations of the National Bureau of Investigation on an alleged $30-million shakedown of a Czech company. It’s been a year since the NBI started that probe, and the public still doesn’t know the results.

Certain quarters are currently pursuing reports that it wasn’t just Vitangcol’s uncle-in-law who was an incorporator of that lucky local firm, but the relative of someone in P-Noy’s inner circle. If this is established, it would further hurt P-Noy’s image as Mr. Clean, even if indirectly.

These days P-Noy is under fire for holding on to another BFF, Florencio Abad, believed to be the architect of the DAP, as well as executive officials implicated in the pork barrel scam.

They should do their boss a favor and quit, but P-Noy doesn’t seem to have such luck.

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The officials concerned are relying on reassuring words from Malacañang about the presumption of innocence – a principle that the executive chooses not to apply when it comes to members of the opposition.

It does look like P-Noy truly does not want his friends, particularly Abad, to quit. Being a former congressman and senator, P-Noy is surely aware of the mechanisms in crafting the annual national budget. He is also surely aware of the gray area that allowed presidents to impound “savings” from executive departments and use the funds for other purposes.

That gray area has been around since the presidency of Corazon Aquino, but she did not exploit it. Under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, executive offices were required to set aside amounts as “savings” that were then impounded by Malacañang and used at the president’s discretion. That gives you an idea of why no impeachment complaint against GMA ever prospered.

Congress is supposed to wield the power of the purse. But with the deft utilization of impounded “savings” combined with the pork barrel, Malacañang can bend Congress to its will, foiling impeachment complaints or unseating officials who can be removed only by impeachment, such as the chief justice.

With the Supreme Court stopping such executive fund juggling and citizens keeping an eye out for new forms of “pork,” Malacañang and Congress are hard-pressed to devise new schemes that will allow the use of public funds for partisan purposes in the approaching election year.

The 2015 General Appropriations Act deserves close public scrutiny because politicians are going to use it in aid of re-election. P-Noy, even if he’s not running in 2016, has a political party that badly needs public funds particularly because private campaign donors are steering clear of its touted standard bearer, who is seen as a sure loser.

Recent reports indicate that one administration strategy is to buy the gratitude (and, the administration hopes, support) of politicians by requiring DILG approval for development projects in both national and local levels.

An indirect tack to boost the Liberal Party (LP)’s chances, according to some reports, is to slash funding for the council in charge of housing for the poor. The council is headed by Vice President Jejomar Binay, currently still the frontrunner in the 2016 presidential race.

The scandals involving LP stalwart Abad and the MRT, which is under a department headed by acting LP head Joseph Emilio Abaya, are bad not only for the party but for P-Noy himself.

P-Noy isn’t going to be impeached, but people are betting that once he steps down in 2016, he’s bound to face criminal indictments for the DAP, possibly for plunder, which won’t allow him to post bail.

His defense is “good faith,” but this must be established in court after an indictment. Shielding his officials implicated in the DAP and pork barrel scandals isn’t helping P-Noy’s case.