The SC recently declared that the Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP, a brainchild of his Rasputin, Budget Secretary Florencio “Butch” Abad violates the Constitution as it unduly and illegally gives the president the discretionary power to allocate funds outside the General Appropriations Act. (See DBM website...). Touted as a means to be a stimulus program to pump-prime the economy, it became instead the President’s primary tool to stimulate the greedy impulses of some unscrupulous members of the senate.
The DAP by any measure is no more than the President’s pork; and pork has been the nightmare of this miserable country. You don’t have to use your imagination! Millions of Filipinos are in the gutter because of a culture of corruption. The President won on a promise to disavow corruption and correct the mistakes of the past. Now, he could no longer hold the morale high-ground.
Records show that 19 senators who voted to oust CJ Corona received their DAP funds six months after CJ Corona was impeached– and we have the statement of a plunderer-senator on this! We have a vindictive President who spent the first half of his administration going after former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This is utterly appalling. My boss, Pnoy’s mama, will be turning in her grave.
Let us refresh our memory to put things in proper perspective. Begin with the President’s premise in seeking the ouster of the former Chief Justice. Pnoy said that he wanted to start fresh witha clean government. This meant contrasting his administration and his persona from his predecessor – Gloria. He needed to replace her alter-ego with his own at the helm of the last bastion of Justice – the Supreme Court. The grounds for getting rid of Corona were at best flimsy but DAP, unbeknownst to us then, greased the process.
The former CJ was impeached because he lied. But he was convicted not because he lied. Now we have a pretty good idea. He was convicted because the senators who voted to convict him, for all the hell that it is worth, all stood to receive at most 100 million from the DAP Program.
Cory and Ninoy’s only son has betrayed public trust. Now, will Congress impeach him?
(Abangan ang Kasunod! Contributions from the readers are welcome to play around this scenario.)
