DAP list is sanitized — Tiangco

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad. Photo courtesy of the World Economic Forum 2014 / Fotopedia

MANILA — United Nationalist Alliance secretary general Toby Tiangco claimed on Tuesday that the list of the P10 billion released to legislators under the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) is sanitized.

The said list was submitted to the House of Representatives by Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.

Tiangco said that the secretary earlier committed to present all relevant documents before the budget debates on the plenary floor.

But apparently, according to Tiangco, Abad came “totally unprepared for the budget debates in the House of Representatives.

“The plenary debates started in the morning but Secretary Abad did not submit the documents [until] I questioned the quorum around 2:45 p.m. [when] Secretary Abad handed over a ‘supposed’ report of the DAP releases,” he said in a Philippine Daily Inquirer report.

“But there are many blanks and missing details,” he added.“It was supposed to be a copy of the DBM (Department of Budget and Management), but when I started interpellation, the pages of my copy and their copy were shockingly not the same.”

He also noted how he became even more suspicious and started questioning the items line by line when the names of the legislators were omitted in each item.

“I asked Secretary Abad [to provide] all the letter-requests of legislators, the status reports of the projects and all the necessary details wherein we can see the amount per legislator. A deficient and incomplete report is unacceptable in this day and age of computers,” he said.

“Where is the P10.08 billion DAP given to congressmen and senators? This looks like a sanitized report. Where is the list with the names of senators and congressmen?” Tiangco added.