We knew they would resurrect the Priority Development Assistance Fund and Disbursement Acceleration Program eventually. What we did not expect is that they would do so immediately after the Supreme Court had declared both the PDAF and DAP as being unconstitutional. Talk of being brazen. Talk of being shameless. Talk of being contemptuous.
In a talk before accountants, former Senator Panfilo Lacson unveiled the resurrection of both PDAF and the DAP. First, he mentioned that he had found no less than P428 billion in lump-sum appropriations which took the place of either PDAF or DAP. He cited the example of the budget of the Department of Agriculture amounting to P39 billion pesos. The senator then identified within this budget P6.25 billion for farm-to-market roads, which in reality would be farm-to-pocket roads of the Tongressmen.
Lacson also identified the resurrection of PDAF in the form of the so-called Unified Accounts Code Structure or UACS. According to Lacson: “Recently, the government rolled out reforms in our public financial management. The government adopted, starting last year, the so-called Unified Accounts Code Structure or the UACS, a single classification system for all our government financial processes—from budgeting to cash management to accounting and audit. UACS calls for transparency and accountability, or so they claim. As my team and I randomly analyze this coding system, say, of the National Irrigation Administration, we discovered that there were some codes missing. To our surprise, such ‘missing codes’ were utilized to insert some projects during the budget deliberation in the House of Representatives. We likewise discovered that, in the budget of the said agency alone, there is a total lump sum amounting to 11.3 billion pesos.”
Lacson further argued that “after the PDAF, we also discovered the obvious reincarnation of the SC unconstitutionally declared Budget Circular 541 which earlier gave the DBM the authority to pool and declare as savings unobligated, unutilized, and unreleased appropriations, not at the end of the fiscal year but the second quarter. We found it in Sec 70 and Sec 73 under the General Provisions of the 2015 General Appropriations Act”. This, according to Lacson, is the rebirth of the DAP.
In any case, it can be told that just as in the case of the defunct Countryside Development Fund which, due to its unpopularity as being an institutionalized source of corruption, was renamed Priority Development Assistance Fund, it can now be told that PNoy defied the Supreme Court anew by renaming both the DAP and the PDAF as UACS. What else is new?
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It has been reported by the media that Andal Ampatuan Sr is now comatose at the National Kidney Institute. I was able to confirm his illness because the mother of one of my best friends was confined next door to the Ampatuan patriarch.
At this point, we can only decry the snail pace of the on-going trial that may now deprive both the accused and the victims a judicial finding of his guilt or innocence. While we have not objected to the requested furlough of the Ampatuan children who are currently detained in Bicutan to enable them to visit their father, we ask the PNP and the NBI to exercise extraordinary diligence in preventing their possible escape.