Budget Secretary Florencio Abad
If a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, then PDAF by any other word play would still stink.
No matter how Secretary Florencio Abad, of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), supports, defends and deodorizes the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) of government, once it is associated or goes through the hands or office of any lawmaker, either a congressman or a senator, its usage stinks as much as the Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF.
As much as I would like to think and believe that the DAP is what it is really, an assistance coming from the executive branch that serves “as a valuable fiscal tool for accelerating government spending, and the delivery of goods and services to the people,” as described by Abad, yet why is DAP still being made a conduit of funding for senators’ additional development projects when they already have their own scandalous amount of P200-million regular PDAF or pork barrel?
The honorable senators could not even account where their PDAF went and how it has benefited the people, it at all, now you hand them a tubful of money which only corrupts them and their cohorts and claim that the DAP is what spurred the nation’s economic activity?
Baloney!
For sure, the way DAP has gone is the way PDAF went.
There is no better person to disparage at the DAP and debunk the claims of Abad than former Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who never got his PDAF during his term, and who said that he considered the funds from the DAP as regular pork because it was taken from the budget and was on top of the P200-million annual allocation for senators.
“It’s just the nomenclature. From CIA (Congressional Initiative Allocation) to the CDF (Countrywide Development Fund) and which has metamorphosed into PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund). Whatever name you call it, that is still pork,” Lacson said.
Not only are DAP funds “regular” items in the General Appropriations Act (GAA), according to Lacson, but he added, “The projects bankrolled by these additional funds are either institutional or personal. Institutional if this was coursed through state agencies; personal if the insertions or realignments were made by the lawmakers themselves.”
So, there you go! It can’t be more factually truthful than that.
Whether PDAF or DAP, it is still the same pork barrel.
The commingling of PDAF and DAP is so mind-boggling in amount that if not used legitimately will surely impoverished the country, and that is what has been happening.
Instead of humanizing the pork barrel, as it has been intended to be, it is being politicized and taken advantaged by unscrupulous politicians.
So, how can you not say that the DAP is another significant milking source for corruption when those who have vested political interest dangles it or uses it as an incentive or a bribe to have things done their way?
Surely, when the DAP is used this way it becomes an evil deed by the giver and a source of crime by the receiver.
One need not listen and believe all that Sen. Jinggoy Estrada said in his privilege speech, especially that about rewarding senators for impeaching former SC Chief Justice Renato Corona, for he was simply trying to muddle the issue against him by dragging as many of his colleagues as he can to the muck he is mired in.
But, in reality payola is not so an uncommon practice in government and the DAP could very well be a good source for that.
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