‘Pork' reborn?

FORMER senator Panfilo Lacson said he and his team discovered at least P424 billion in lump-sum appropriations, a.k.a. discretionary funds, in the national budget while they were reviewing the 2015 General Appropriations Act (GAA).

The amount, parked in the budget of just 11 of the 21 major national government agencies, could still go up, he said. “Hold your breath. It is still counting,” Lacson said.

Could these billions of pesos in discretionary funds be the rebirth of the pork barrel?

*** The P10 billion pork barrel scam allegedly perpetuated by Janet Lim-Napoles has sent at least three senators to jail.

The Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and some parts of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), pooled funds from savings of agencies and used to finance projects outside the approved national budget.

How about lump-sum funds stuffed in the national budget?

*** Lacson wondered whether the lump-sum funds in the 2015 GAA meant the return of the unconstitutional PDAF.

He said Sections 70 and 73 of the General Provision of the 2015 GAA also gave the Department of Budget and Management the authority to pool and declare as savings unobligated, unutilized and unreleased appropriations at the end of the second quarter.

“Are we now looking at the rebirth of the DAP?” Lacson said.

Well, the pork barrel may have morphed into the mythical many-headed hydra. Cut one head off and two more will grow in its place.

*** But the DBM, in a statement, said Lacson’s “doomsday assertions” on lump sums and the supposed resurrection of the DAP under the 2015 budget were inaccurate.

The DBM said the supposed DAP provisions are not in the GAA and that there are fewer lump sums in the administration’s spending plan this year.

The lump-sum items are funds whose specific purposes are impossible to determine in the planning process such as where disasters will strike or what the extent of the potential damage might be, it said.

Was the DBM telling us Lacson was merely seeing ghosts of PDAFs and DAPs past?