Youth party welcomes Duterte’s directive to probe DAP

From the Philippine News Agency (May 25): Youth party welcomes Duterte’s directive to probe DAP

The Kabataan Partylist on Wednesday welcomed the announcement of incoming Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will investigate officials of the Aquino administration for their involvement and commission of unconstitutional acts under the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

Earlier, Aguirre said that it was incoming President Rodrigo Duterte’s “marching order” to pursue corruption cases, especially on DAP, and file charges against everyone implicated “no matter who gets hurt.”

Newly-elected Kabataan Partylist Rep. Sarah Elago said the announcement was a very welcome development and appealed to Duterte and Aguirre to exhaust all means to implement the Supreme Court ruling on DAP.

“The masterminds behind the multi-billion DAP scheme should finally be prosecuted, without fear or favor. The Filipino people have high expectations for the DOJ regarding this case. Aguirre should not let us all down,” she said.

In its 27-page ruling promulgated February last year, the SC upheld the unconstitutionality of several acts under DAP, particularly the “withdrawal of unobligated allotments from the implementing agencies, and the declaration of the withdrawn unobligated allotments and unreleased appropriations as savings,” as well as the “cross-border transfer of savings.”

The SC also emphasized that “only DAP projects found in the appropriate GAAs may be the subject of augmentation by legally accumulated savings.”

The ruling further said that “whether or not the 116 DAP-funded projects had appropriation cover and were validly augmented require factual determination that is not within the scope of the present consolidated petitions.”

“This is precisely what the DOJ needs to investigate – whether a crime was committed by channeling funds to these DAP projects,” Elago said.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=888783