Realignment of PDAF funds illegal
Senators are defending the realignment of their pork barrel to executive departments. Of course they will. It is as if they still have their hated Priority Development Assistance Fund—the official name of the pork barrel—only it is hidden in the budgets of certain departments. Nine senators have realigned a total of P1.8 billion from the outlawed PDAF to these departments. Sen. Francis Escudero said these are “preenactment amendments to the national budget.” What the Supreme Court has outlawed, he said, is a postenactment amendment, meaning an amendment after the budget has been passed, as it was in the case of projects funded by the PDAF.
But does the Constitution and the high court’s decision allow it? I don’t think so.
Here is the pertinent provision of the Constitution (Article VI, Section 25): “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the President, Senate President, House Speaker, Chief Justice and heads of constitutional commissions (such as the Comelec, Commission on Audit, etc.) 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.”
This provision is very clear. It says that:
• Only the President, Senate President, House Speaker, Chief Justice and heads of constitutional commissions are authorized to realign funds. No one else, not even senators, are allowed to do this.
• There must be a law authorizing them to do this.
• The fund that will be realigned must come from savings from the same department—i.e., from one item to another.
For example, savings from the appropriations for travel in the Department of Public Works and Highways can be realigned to augment the funds for the repair of, say, a bridge to be done by the DPWH. The fund does not leave the department.
But it does not allow the transfer of funds from one department to another, as in the present case of Senate funds being realigned to the DPWH and other departments.
• The Constitution also does not allow Congress to increase the budget proposed by the executive branch. It can only decrease it.
However, the realignment made by the senators increased the budget of some departments by transferring the funds of an already outlawed PDAF to them.
As for the Supreme Court’s decision, it outlaws ALL lump-sum appropriations (such as the PDAF) with the exception of, by common sense, the Calamity Fund because no one can predict what calamities will hit the country and how much damage these will make. It is also common sense that lump-sum appropriations breed graft and corruption because the department head has the discretion to use the fund as he sees it. That was the case of the PDAF, as lawmakers had the discretion to use it for their alleged projects and choose the contractors who would do these projects, including the projects of the NGOs of Janet Lim-Napoles.
The high court also outlawed “postenactment” amendments to the national budget—or amendments made after the national budget has been passed. Lawmakers indeed have the right to amend the budget (or any proposed law) but the amendments must be made during the budget deliberations. However, no amendment may increase the budget of any department as proposed by the Department of Budget and Management. The Senate realignments increase the budgets of some departments; therefore, they are not allowed.
In short, as I see it, the realignments made by the nine senators (and those by some congressmen in the House budget) are illegal. The high court should clarify its decision.
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Shooting deaths are now so common in the Philippines that the situation has become scary. It is no longer safe to drive a vehicle. You may meet another driver with a gun who will shoot you over a minor traffic altercation. It is not safe to walk either. Motorcycle-riding men may shoot you.
The Gunless Society has tallied these killings from media reports and it counted at least one killing a day. It does not include those not reported by the media, or those killed or wounded by stray bullets.
It is clear that we must have a strict gun control law. The Philippine National Police is implementing a new gun control law that has made the situation worse, not better. Imagine, under this new law, a person is allowed to own as many as 15 guns. Fifteen! What in heaven’s name is one going to do with 15 guns, build a private army? Not even the bad men of the Wild Wild West have as many.
But what can we expect? The new law was made by politicians most of whom have their own private armies. The law was crafted to benefit themselves, not the public’s safety.
Equally scary, the police cannot arrest these trigger-happy criminals, much less send them to jail. (Rolito Go is an exception.)
What we need to do is prevent the shooting, instead of going after the shooter after his victim is dead. The shooting of the grandson of mimic Willie Nepomuceno could have been worse. While the police have arrested the alleged gunman, they cannot find the other rich kids who were his companions, or the witnesses to the crime.
What we need is a strict gun control law similar to those of Japan, Hong Kong and Macau, which have the lowest crime rate in the world. On the other hand, the United States, which has very lenient gun laws, has the highest murder rate in the world. In that country, every now and then some psycho with a gun massacres children in school and shoppers in a mall. Yet US lawmakers do not wake up to this danger.
We should wake up before we become the murder capital of Asia.
