The Aquino administration released P78.38 billion from the Disbursement Acceleration Program over a period of three months that coincided with the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona, with senators who sat as judges in his trial and lawmakers who acted as prosecutors getting huge sums for undisclosed projects, according to Congress.
This said by Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco on. That on the first day of the plenary debate on the P2.6 trillion national budget for 2015, he also questioned the quorum, after Budget Secretary Florencio Abad refused to submit to Congress a list containing the names of lawmakers who received a total of P10.08 billion from the DAP.
Sensing that the House could not muster the 148 members needed for a quorum, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. prevailed upon Abad to release the document to prevent further delays.
There were fewer than 50 congressmen who were physically present at the session hall when Tiangco questioned the quorum at 2:45 p.m.
But Tiangco pressed Abad for an “unsanitized” list after he saw that the 138-page document showing projects granted to lawmakers were lacking in detail, and labeled simply as “various infrastructure and local projects (VILP).”
Based on the document, the lawmakers started receiving their DAP allocations without the corresponding details of where the money went two days before Corona was impeached by the House on Dec. 12, 2011, the same day that the Senate convened itself into an impeachment court. (With details and reports from Manila Standard TODAY)