Noynoy had pork of P700B in 2012 DAP Written by Angie M. Rosales Saturday, 26 October 2013 00:00 President Aquino may keep on claiming that his economic stimulus package called Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which he and his Department of Budget and Management (DBM) chief defend as having been created to increase government spending in 2011, is not pork and should not be equated with the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). However, contratry to his claim, Aquino had, for his DAP, a whopping P700 billion, with allegations of billions used to bribe legislators from both houses of Congress to impeach and convict former Chief Justice Renato Corona, as well as using the DAP funds for transactional politics. A former senator, who has made his stand clear of his being against the DAP, bared Thursday that Malacañang had at one point a potential P700 billion at its disposal for the said fiscal plan. The amount being referred to by former Sen. Panfilo Lacson was during the fiscal year 2012, the same year when the Corona impeachment trial was culminated with a conviction after Corona was found guilty of the articles of impeachment filed against him. Earlier, there were charges that Aquino had paid off the legislators in the House of Representatives to initiate animpeachment complaint against the sitting chief justice and rushed the articles of impeachment, which was clearly flawed, and not even read by legislators who had signed the impeachment complaint. Later this year, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada “unwittingly” exposed DAP funds being supposedly the source of funding mechanism by the Executive for the additional P50 million to P100 million each pork barrel to some senators. Lacson made the disclosure regarding the supposed funding source of DAP in the past before the members of the Philippine Constitution Association (Philconsa), one of the petitioners before the Supreme Court, questioning its unconstitutionality, during a speaking engagement at the Manila Golf Club in Makati City. The former lawmaker threw his support behind Philconsa’s petition, even commending its members for their efforts in questioning the constitutionality of the DAP before the Supreme Court. “I fully support your petition — not to put President Aquino in a bad light, or declare an all-out war against the DAP, because I personally believe, as a layman who also knows and understands certain simple provisions of the Constitution, that DAP per se in neither bad nor illegal,” Lacson said in his speech. Lacson, who is an ally of Aquino, said he believes in the President’s honesty, adding that “I want to help him succeed in his well-intentioned “Daang Matuwid” vision for this benighted land.” Read the rest of the Tribune article here: tribune.net.ph/headlines/noynoy-had-pork-of-p700b-in-2012-dap
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 03:18:15 +0000
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