IRA a far bigger anomaly

Last July 15, I saw on TV Inquirer columnist Randy David as a member of a panel of resource persons, together with Undersecretary Manuel L. Quezon III and three others. He greatly impressed me with his views on the Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP and the Supreme Court decision declaring parts of the DAP unconstitutional.

The DAP and the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), which involve

billions of pesos in public money, are the “talk” of the whole nation today. However, there is another anomaly that, albeit much less talked about, may be far bigger than the PDAF and the DAP. This also involves “diverted” public funds. These funds—just from the time the Supreme Court legalized their (mis)use for salaries and allowances of government personnel in special cities and poor local government units (LGUs), in its decision on Paulino M. Alecha et al. vs Elmer Ben V. Pasion, et al.

(GR No. 164506, Jan. 19, 2010)—must by now total trillions of pesos. I am referring to the internal revenue allotment (IRA) shares of the LGUs.

We can presume that all LGUs—more or less 1,500 municipalities, and hundreds of provinces and cities—welcomed the Supreme Court decision, and subsequently diverted their IRA for purposes other than the delivery of important basic services as mandated by the pertinent laws, rules, regulations and provisions of the General Appropriations Act.

Considering that the combined IRA of all LGUs for 2014 alone is more than P300 billion, one can assume that in addition to those of previous years, the diverted IRA by this time must have run to trillions of pesos, and counting with every new fiscal year.

That was a one-sided decision which never considered the arguments of the complainants.

For example, the local government of Midsalip, Zamboanga del Sur, at the time it implemented the salary schedule for the employees of  special cities in 1997, had a locally generated income of P450,000 only, or 4 percent of its appropriation for that year, of which 96 percent came from the IRA. The same situation exists to this day.

Consider too the failure of Associate Justice Antonio Eduardo B. Nachura to inhibit himself from the deliberation and the signing of that Supreme Court decision. Prior to his appointment to the Supreme Court, he was the solicitor general and counsel for the public respondents. Hence, he acted both as judge and

counsel—for them.

The decision has to be reversed for it defeats the law and deprives a vast majority of our people of important basic services and facilities.

I hope that as an independent-minded and outstanding citizen and a very influential personality in our country, David can help the Court see the error and injustice in that

decision.

—P S/SUPT PAULINO M. ALECHA (Ret.),

member, board of directors,

Alliance to Save the Integrity of Nature,

Midsalip, Zamboanga del Sur