The second cover-up involves the fact that out of 325 House of Representatives members and 17 senators, the Justice Department, the Ombudsman’s investigators, and their stable of whistle-blowers have singled out only three senators Jinggoy Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile and Ramon Revilla leaders of the opposition, with the latter two in fact having declared that they would be running either for president or vice president in 2016.
Isn’t that way too convenient, that the barrage of charges against the two, their arrest and incarceration have painted them as crooks, two years before elections in 2016? Isn’t that too convenient, with the ratings of Mar Roxas Aquino’s bet for 2016 slipping from about 17 percent at the start of the year to single-digit levels in recent polls, with his rival Jejomar Binay, allies of Enrile and Estrada, moving from 53 to 57 percent?
The third cover-up is the Commission on Audit’s (COA) failure, refusal, or foot-dragging in undertaking an audit of the use of funds from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) from 2010 to 2013, or during Aquino’s watch, as well as of his patently unconstitutional new form of pork, the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds.
The PDAF releases from 2010-2013 (already the Aquino administration) totaled P62.5 billion, double the P26.1 billion from 2007 to 2009, which is the subject of the current pork-barrel cases at the Sandiganbayan.
But these are dwarfed by the DAP, which totaled P157 billion from 2011 to 2013 according to official data from the Budget department itself (http://ift.tt/2mLQ7dA).
Mr. Tiglao remarked that the COA was able to ignore the ‘suspicious’ funds released under Aquino’s
administration in his ärst three years Php 220 billion in totality.
Mr. Tiglao also said that COA Chairman Grace Pulido-Tan who demonized Janet Lim Napoles by
branding the utilization of 2007-2009 pork barrel funds as “kahindik-hindik”. He also presented four
questions for Chairman Tan to asnwers:
Has she issued the ofãce directive ordering the COA’s special audits unit to undertake an audit of the PDAF from 2010-2013, and of the DAP from 2011-2013, in the rigorous manner the agency audited the funds released from 2007 to 2009? It is not just me who’s asking for an audit of the PDAF funds from 2010-2012.
It was the second highest ofãcial of land, Vice President Jejomar Binay, who as early as last year, and as reported in newspapers on August 31, 2013, demanded that the auditing should not only include the years 2007 to 2009, but also the years until 2012.
Is the Department of Budget and Management cooperating fully in providing the COA all the documents it has been asking for? (For the 2007-2009 audit, it refused to surrender all documents the COA asked for, most probably those dealing with Aquino’s allies and Liberal Party stalwarts.)
Given the fact that such an audit of Aquino’s PDAF and DAP would clear the COA and this administration of the accusations that they are not really on an anti-corruption drive but on a campaign to bury the political opposition, has Tan deployed more auditors so the audits can be accelerated, considering the amounts involved are eight times bigger than those for 2007-2009?
Can she promise the nation that the audit of Aquino’s pork barrel will be ãnished this year, and not after the 2016 elections?
Mr. Tiglao also wondered that Chairman Tan would delay or hinder the audit of Aquino’s pork barrel
as for then President Noynoy Aquino to return the favor to her and have that as a ticket for her to be
appointed as a Supreme Court justice? He urged also the Commission to instantaneously audit
Aquino’s pork since it involves a very huge amount.
Mr. Tiglao also stated that Aquino used the PDAF and DAP to bribe the house in charging then Chief
Justice Renato Corona, and then the senators änd him guilty.
“This has been established not only by testimony of those receiving the funds (it was Jinggoy Estrada who exposed it in October 2013), but also by the timing of the funds’ releases. (See my columns: “P559 million released before Senate vote vs. Corona”, Sept. 29, 2013 and “DBM data conãrms P100M ‘bribe’ to 16 senators each,” Oct 3. 2013.),” Mr. Tiglao said.
He also raised a very interesting question, as we quote, “With Aquino bribing congressmen and
senators by throwing at them millions of pesos worth of pork barrel funds, would he or his ofãcials have tightened up procedures to make sure that the legislators don’t steal the proceeds, as they had done in 2007-2009?”
surrendered in Malacañang and Aquino accompanied her towards the police station. Mr. Tiglao also
wondered if the fund scam involved Florencio Abad, since the former DBM Secretary was a
congressman and knows everything about handling people’s money, how the scam could pass under
his nose.
“For all of Aquino’s sickening blah-blahs about 'walang mahirap kung walang corrupt,' did he ever talk against the pork barrel system before it was exposed in 2013? Since he, and he alone, directed the use of the DAP, Aquino used these funds as his own personal treasury. Undeniably, Aquino’s hands are tainted with pork barrel money,” said Mr. Tiglao.
He also noted the COA’s wrong prioritization to audit transactions and supported Aquino’s staged
anti-graft campaign.
Chairman Tan must order for the instant audit on former president’s pork barrel fund to prove that
COA is not a pretentious institution which fought against corruption, otherwise, the COA will be
branded as another organization inältrated by Aquino and his cohorts. As Mr. Tiglao wrote in his
article, “For all its posturing as an anti-corruption body, the COA under Tan will be judged by history as another institution prostituted by Aquino, unless she orders the audit of this president’s P220 billion pork barrel, the biggest amount of government money ever put under a president’s sole whim in our history, and the biggest secret of all in this saga."
Source: Manila Times
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