Several groups of government employees have officially joined the fight against the controversial use of discretionary funds through the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).
In a 25-page petition, the government employees, like seven other petitioners before them, asked the high court to issue a temporary restraining order against the implementation of the DAP and to declare it "null and void."
The group of government labor groups and unions who joined the eight petition include:
- Confederation for Unity Recognition and Advancement of Government Employees (Courage)
- Consolidated Union of Employees National Housing Authority
- Social Welfare Employees Association of the Philippines Department of Social Welfare and Development Central Office
- Department of Agrarian Reform Employees Association
- Environmental Management Bureau Employees Union
- Kapisanan Para sa Kagalingan ng mga Kawani ng Metro Manila Development Authority.
The petitioners also argued that the DAP violates the "equal protection" clause of the 1987 Philippine Constitution.
The equal protection clause states that laws must be applied equally and must not give preference to one person or class of persons over another.
"As to why the senators were treated differently as regard the amount of the DAP they received, with some receiving this much and some receiving nothing at all, respondents failed to give credible explanation," the petitioners said.
Named respondents in the petition were President Benigno Aquino III, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa, and Department of Budget and Management Secretary Florencio Abad.
The petitioners said the DAP should be struck down as illegal because it is an appropriation by the executive branch, in violation of Section 24, Article VI of the Constitution which states that all appropriations "shall originate exclusively in the House of Representatives."
The petitioners stressed that the Constitution allows the government to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.
However, the petitioners added, "There must be savings. The savings must come from others items in their respective appropriation. And the authorization must come from law."
"In the case at bar, there is no savings from which the augmentation may be effected," they added.
The DAP, which became an issue after Senator Jinggoy Estrada bared he and other senators who voted to convict impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona in May last year received P50 million each in additional funds months after the impeachment trial.
Abad has admitted that the funds came from the DAP, but maintained these were not bribes or incentives for senators. He said the DAP fund, which is basically realigned savings, was released to address sluggish government spending in 2011.
A Department of Budget and Management (DBM) National Budget Circular No. 541 dated July 18, 2012 said due to the “under-spending of various agencies,” President Aquino ordered on June 27, 2012 “the withdrawal of all unobligated allotments of all agencies with low level of obligations as of June 30, 2012 both for continuing and current allotment.”
The “withdrawn funds” were deemed as savings by Aquino and Abad and realigned to “augment existing programs and projects of other agencies” and "fund priority programs and projects not considered in the 2012 budget but expected to be started or implemented within the current year."
But the petitioners said the funds cannot be artificially deemed “savings” as defined by the DBM and the General Appropriations Act of 2012 since there can be no savings in the middle of a fiscal year, especially if the projects or programs for which these funds were allocated by law, have not been completed, discontinued, or abandoned.
They said the resolution of the issue of whether Circular 541 or the DAP violates the Constitution, Executive Order 292 or the Administrative Code, and the appropriations law is not political as it no longer pertains to the wisdom of a discretionary act of a public official.
They said the funds accumulated through the DAP are part of the presidential pork barrel, where only the sitting President,in this case, Aquino, can determine where the funds will go. They said this could be used for patronage politics.
— JDS, GMA News
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