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BS Aquino’s anomalous DAP disbursements are 500 times bigger than Gloria Arroyo’s anomalous PhP366 million PCSO fund diversion: PhP4.5 billion for “additional train cars”; PhP1.82 billion for the anomalous counter-insurgency PAMANA program; and PhP1.29 billion for the Agrarian Reform Communities.

MEDIA RELEASE
By CPP Information Bureau
05 July 2014

Filipino people did not benefit from fund diversion under DAP -- CPP

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today disputed claims by the Aquino regime that the Filipino people benefited from the diversion of funds under Malacañang’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) and dismissed such as vain attempts to justify the Aquino regime’s anomalous realignment of as much as PhP177 billion (US$4.1 billion) in public funds.
The CPP pointed out that Aquino’s disbursement of funds under the DAP did not help resolve the Filipino people’s outstanding problems of unemployment, low wages, landlessness, homelessness, poverty and rising prices which have continued to worsen under the Aquino regime.
Last Monday, the Philippine Supreme Court issued an en banc decision declaring the DAP as unconstitutional, favoring the petition by BAYAN and other people’s organizations and democratic personalities. By asserting, however, that culpability can be applied only on future transgressions, the Supreme Court left legal loopholes that could be used by Aquino to avoid criminal prosecution and impeachment.
“It is Aquino’s political supporters, members and allies of the Liberal Party, his friends and big business oligarchs who benefited from the diversion of funds under the DAP,” pointed out the CPP. “A detailed accounting and auditing of the DAP will bear out how Aquino made use of public funds for his self-serving political interests.”
“Not unlike the pork barrel funds, the funds diverted through the DAP by Malacañang and its budget officials have been allocated to the ‘epal’ projects of favored polticians, such as public infrastructure projets stamped with the names of Aquino’s allied politicos, as well as other big-ticket projects under the Public-Private Partnership Program with contracts awarded to favored big business groups,” added the CPP.
“Even without concrete information to back up their claims, Aquino’s apologists have been insisting that fund releases under the DAP were done in ‘good faith’ to draw attention away from the fact that such fund diversions were carried out illegally and upon the sole discretion of Aquino.
The CPP also pointed out that Aquino’s DAP diversions are almost 500 times bigger than Arroyo’s anomalous PhP366 million PCSO fund diversion. They include such questionable releases as the PhP4.5 billion for “additional train cars” which was not on any of the plans of the transportation department, PhP1.82 billion for the anomalous counter-insurgency PAMANA program, P26.9 billion additional allocations for government corporations, PhP8.5 billion for the so-called “stimulus program” in the ARMM, PhP1.29 billion for the Agrarian Reform Communities of the DAR and PhP625 million for a survey to be conducted by the departments of agrarian reform and agriculture.