Another petition has been filed before the Supreme Court, this time by the country’s lawyers, challenging the legality of Malacañang’s controversial Discretionary Acceleration Program (DAP) funds. In a 24-page plea for prohi-bition, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), through former University of the Philippines Law Dean Pacifico Agabin, yesterday asked the high tribunal to issue a temporary res-training order (TRO) to stop the release of the public funds through the DAP program which is administered by Malacañang to realign savings into pet government projects. Budget Secretary Florencio Abad was named respondent in the petition. The suit pointed out that “taxpayers will suffer irreparable injury because the money they have paid the government was illegally utilized.” It is the fifth suit filed before the high court calling for the scrapping of the program for being unconstitutional. Similar petitions were filed by former Iloilo lawmaker Augusto Syjuco, Manuelito Luna, Jose Malvar Villegas and the Philippine Constitution Association. The IBP said the disbursement of government’s savings without a valid appropriation is not only tantamount to grave abuse of discretion but can also be considered a criminal act, that is technical malversation which is punishable under the Revised Penal Code. It argued that DAP violates Article VI, Section 29 of the Constitution which states that “No money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law.” The petitioner noted that DAP does not appear in General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2011, 2012 or 2013. “To be sure, following the constitutional precepts above, respondent cannot, on his own, use public funds to create and utilize a program which had not been allowed by Congress. Neither is he allowed to spend additional public funds for projects beyond what was appropriated in the GAA without congressional approval. Such acts are beyond his jurisdiction and authority and violative of the Constitution,” the IBP stressed. The IBP added Abad cannot use Article VI, Section 25 (5) of the Constitution to insist on the legality of DAP. The said provision states that the President, Senate President, House Speaker, the Chief Justice and the heads of Constitutional Commissions, “may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.” The IBP stressed that under the said constitutional provision and the GAA, there should be a law which allows the use of savings and the savings must come from items appropriated by the GAA to the Executive department. It added the savings must be used to augment items already found in the GAA. “There is no appropriation for such a program, nor was there any allocation made by Congress therefor. Obviously, this is not a program submitted to Congress for its approval,” the IBP petition stated. It noted that as present, Abad has failed to give exact details where DAP funds were used and whether these are indeed items included in the GAAs. It was also illegal, according to IBP, for the Executive department to supplant the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) being given to senators and congressmen considering that under the Constitution, the President may only use savings to augment an item “for their respective offices.” “What is clear is that respondent believes that he has a free hand over the use of the DAP, and an unbridled power to source its funding. Free enough to even supplant the PDAF allocations of certain senators,” the petitioner stressed. The IBP also asked the high court to direct the Commission on Audit to conduct an immediate audit of all public funds disbursed through DAP.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 11:22:05 +0000
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