Jinggoy’s pork realignment in defiance of SC decision

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s skillful strategy of realigning what he claimed to be his P200-million Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel in the 2014 budget to the cities of Manila and Caloocan and a town in Cagayan province is unconstitutional and a clear and open defiance of the Nov. 19, 2013, Supreme Court decision declaring the legislators’ PDAF unconstitutional.

The Court clarified that it rendered the decision “to rectify an error which has persisted in the chronicles of our history,” in effect saying that the past interventions made by our legislators in the implementation of the budget should not have been tolerated.

Estrada’s and eight other senators’ defense that their respective P200-million PDAF was “reinserted during the bicameral conference” is an admission that their PDAF was not originally included in the budget. Otherwise, there was no need to “reinsert” the same. Likewise, insertions or reinsertions of budgetary items during a bicameral conference is of doubtful constitutionality as it violates the exclusive original jurisdiction of the House of Representatives on appropriation measures.

To sanction the “reinsertion” of their PDAF in the budget and allow them to realign or reassign the funds to whatever or whomsoever they desire would be to circumvent the Court ruling that legislators should not be accorded “post-enactment authority” in the areas of “project identification, fund release or fund realignment.”

Estrada’s act of assigning his P200-million PDAF to the above-mentioned local government units is a “post-enactment” action that is related to fund release and/or fund realignment. It is not related to his congressional oversight function; in fact it is an intervention and/or assumption of duties “that probably belong to the sphere of budget execution.”

The high court decision was very emphatic in its pronouncement: “[F]rom the moment the law becomes effective, any provision of law that empowers Congress or any of its members to play any role in the implementation or enforcement of the law violates the principle of separation of powers and is thus unconstitutional.”  Estrada’s act of realigning his “reinserted PDAF” is tantamount to “playing a role” in the implementation of the budget, which the Supreme Court says is violative of the principle of separation of powers and therefore unconstitutional.

Estrada’s act of assigning his PDAF likewise violates the Supreme Court ruling that “national officers,” like senators and House representatives, cannot be allowed “to substitute their judgments in utilizing public funds for local development.”

Finally, the “reinsertion” of the senators’ PDAF during a bicameral conference restored the evil sought to be prevented by the decision—that is, the evil that allows the PDAF “to become personal funds under the effective control of each legislator and given unto them on the sole account of their office.”

—ROMULO B. MACALINTAL,

election lawyer,

Las Piñas City