BUDGET Secretary Florencio Abad said Wednesday he and his allies were prepared for any case they might face in connection with the Disbursement Acceleration Program.
“We have been prepared,” Abad told ANC’s Headstart.
“We have looked at this issue down to its tiniest details and, as we have been doing in the past three years, we have been explaining [it] to the public.”
Abad, who was tagged as the author of the DAP, maintains that he and President Benigno Aquino III did not personally benefit from the program, which Aquino had authorized but which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
“There’s never been allegations that personal gain was involved. It’s just that there are constitutional and technical issues that were involved,” Abad said.
“Only certain acts and practices within [the] DAP were considered unconstitutional, but generally, even the Supreme Court conceded that [the] DAP did the country good.”
Abad said that, in 2010, when the Aquino administration started, their first mandate was to plug the leakages in the DBM.
After the house cleaning, he said, the economy grew by a mere 3.6 percent in 2011.
“But the year after, when we implemented [the] DAP, it grew by 6.8 percent, and in 2013 it went even further to 7.2 percent, and then the controversy hit.”
Incoming Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, who is one of the petitioners in the court case on the DAP, has vowed not to take an active role in running after Aquino or Abad. But he said he believed cases would be filed against the authors of the DAP.
“The meat of the DAP is declared unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court is very clear: The authors of the DAP are liable. That’s beyond me. It’s up to the lawyers to do that,” Diokno said.
The Makabayan Bloc in Congress will file charges against Aquino and some of his appointees for technical malversation, the Disbursement Acceleration Program, and criminal negligence by next month, a lawmaker said Monday.
Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate said their lawyers were now preparing the charges to be filed as soon as Aquino stepped down from office.