‘Shut DAP!’

The circus is back in town. Er, I meant, the 16th Congress is back in session. As tradition requires it, President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III will deliver his state of the nation address (SONA) before members of the Senate and the House of Representatives in joint session at the Batasan Pambansa in Quezon City later this afternoon.

The President’s SONA will cap the reopening of the second regular session of Congress that coincides with the last two years of the Aquino administration. Now on the last 702 days of his term, President Aquino is expected to spell out what remains to be done and how he intends to do it.

There is no denying President Aquino is still smarting from the defeat of his administration’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) before the Supreme Court (SC). In a unanimous decision, the SC ruled “unconstitutional” the four specific executive actions that P-Noy took to go around and skirt existing laws to carry out DAP.

Fuming over the SC ruling, President Aquino could not wait for his SONA and went on televised message to the Filipino people to defend his DAP actions last Monday. In so many words, P-Noy accused the SC itself as having committed the same illegal actions of “cross-border” juggling of public funds from one branch of government to another.

With ominous undertones, the Chief Executive warned the ruling on DAP may engender a situation that might lead to another branch of the government to intervene. As if on cue, lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Party (LP) of President Aquino in Congress have raised anew the issue of the Judiciary Development Fund (JDF) as administered by the high court.

A day after assailing the high court ruling, the next day P-Noy charmed his way into cajoling his rabid loyalists to pin their yellow ribbon to show support to his administration’s DAP. Instead of trying to rally the Filipino nation to unity, he went into childish antics of playing with colors, if not fire.

As if this were not enough, P-Noy was still ranting at the high court four days later. In his speech on the occasion of the 150th birth anniversary of the country’s hero known as the “sublime paralytic” Apolinario Mabini, P-Noy reiterated the same accusations against the high court.

No wonder it now seems the Aquino administration is also losing the DAP battle before the court of public opinion.

This, despite the entire seven hours of public hearing on DAP last Thursday by the Senate committee on finance chaired by Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero. In televised public hearing, explanations and justifications on DAP were presented by its principal author, Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Florencio Abad.

Also invited to the hearing were Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima and Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan.

In fact, almost the entire Aquino Cabinet was present at the Senate session hall. Supposedly, the Cabinet secretaries came to be on hand in case any of their department’s use of DAP would be asked in the course of public hearing.

But it turned out to be an overkill as there was more than enough quorum of LP senators led by Senate president Franklin Drilon and allies led by NP Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV prepared to defend their own DAPs. That’s teamwork at best.

The continuing presidential rage publicly displayed the past few days, however, was met with stony silence from the 15-man high court. To its credit, the high court has shown its independence even as it has four P-Noy’s appointees headed by Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno among those at the receiving end of the presidential wrath.

The LP-controlled House announced over the weekend its plans “to invite” the Chief Justice, or her duly authorized representative as resource person to a public hearing. The House committee on justice is set to conduct public hearings on twin bills filed by pro-administration congressmen who sought to scrap or amend the JDF.

The bills were separately filed by Iloilo Rep.Niel Tupas and Ilocos Norte Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas, chairman and vice chairman, respectively of the House committee on justice. By the way, Tupas and Fariñas were members of the House prosecution team in the impeachment trial of erstwhile Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Also incidentally, the existence of DAP came to light after this was exposed by opposition Sen. Jinggoy Estrada in a privilege speech last year. After being linked to alleged pork-barrel fund scam, Jinggoy revealed he and the rest of the senators and congressmen involved in the Corona impeachment trial got extra fund releases from the DBM.

The “bonus” funds for the pet projects of the lawmakers were on top of their pork allocations in the budget. It was released to them a few months after the impeachment trial that ended in a conviction and ouster from office of Corona.

Taking exception to innuendoes the lawmakers were “bribed” to convict Corona, Abad went on to admit these extra releases from the budget came from what we now know as DAP. But Abad swore these were certainly not additional pork-barrel funds.

In fairness, Abad was consistent when he testified at the Senate public hearing last week to deny these DAP releases were attempts at “bribery” and neither were they additional pork-barrel funds for lawmakers.

No longer aided by such a controversial budget program that ensured quick-fund releases like DAP, the remainder of P-Noy’s term would remain rough, if not more than rough than his first four years in office. The raging brickbats for and against DAP will surely spill over during this last stretch of P-Noy administration as it enters into the campaign period for the next presidential elections in May, 2016.

For now, the DAP issue has been submitted for motion for reconsideration (MR). The Solicitor-General filed last week the MR before the High Court to seek, among other things, clarification on the DAP ruling whether Abad, or the President for that matter, is liable for any violation of the Constitution.

It would do well for everyone concerned to refrain from further comment until the high court clarifies its final ruling. And – pardon the pun – shut DAP!