This time-honored principle is turning out to be anillusion. He has shown early in his administration that he can boot out Chief Justice Corona, who Pnoy abhors. And he did!

Lately it has been exposed that Pnoy used public money to persuade Philippine Senators and Congressmen to cause the impeachment of the Chief Justice. His main instrument was the usage of funds under theDisbursement Acceleration Program (DAP)

What is DAP?

Former Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban, in November 9, 2013 Inquirer Column, writes that the legal basis cited by Budget Secretary Butch Abad in justifying the Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP, comes from Art. VI, Sec. 25 (5) of the Constitution. It states that “[T]he President, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the heads of the Constitutional Commissions may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.”(italics& underscoring – by the author)

So far, so good!

The Official Gazette of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines explains as legal basis for the DAP, Section 49, Chapter 5, Book VI of the 1987 Administrative Code (Executive Order No. 292), which states that“authority to Use Savings for Certain Purposes.—Savings in the appropriations provided in the General Appropriations Act may be used for the settlement of the following obligations incurred during a current fiscal year or previous fiscal years as may be approved by the Secretary in accordance with rules and procedures as may be approved by the President.”

Still good, so far, at this point!

Furthermore, the Gazette also cites Section 38, Chapter 5, Book VI of the 1987 Administrative Code (Executive Order No. 292) Suspension of Expenditure of Appropriations, which says, “except as otherwise provided in the General Appropriations Act and whenever in his judgment the public interest so requires, the President, upon notice to the head of office concerned, is authorized to suspend or otherwise stop further expenditure of funds allotted for any agency, or any other expenditure authorized in the General Appropriations Act, except for personal services appropriations used for permanent officials and employees.”

This is where the conundrum lies.

It has been explained by Budget Secretary Abad himself that these funds were all siphoned off and housed under the Office of the President and solely disbursed upon the President’s discretion.

It might appear then the DAP possess no troubling questions. As the Executive has argued, it is a stimulus fund that has helped the economy togrow. Empirical data however shows that this simply is not true and it has not helped the general population any. The country still suffers from the highest unemployment rates in the whole of Southeast Asia.Indeed the government’s capacity to make growth all-inclusive and equitable is utterly wanting.

But this is not the point!The clear truth herein is that DAP simply puts all the power to dispose government savings to the Presidentat his sole discretion.And now we know what he did with it.

His sycophants will advance the argument that Pnoy has not profited from this – personally – and he is squeaky clean. Yes, yes, yes.... He distributed it as his personal largesse to the greedy elected servants of the people – the Senators and Congressmen. This is patronage politics in its purist form.

Obama would salivate at Pnoy.