VP camp taunts Abad on plunder

The camp of Vice Presidenty Jejomar Binay said that Budget Secretary Butch Abad who was charged with plunder for the controversial disbursement allocation program to shut up and face the music. Vice presidential spokesperson for political affairs, lawyer Rico Quicho made the comment in light of Abad’s reaction to the plunder charge filed against him by former president of the Philippine Constitution Association, Bonifacio Alentajan. "That is absolutely without any basis. It’s a figment of their imagination. Incredible! I do not think they are even serious at all about filing that complaint,” Abad told reporters who sought his reaction on the charges. Binay’s camp finds Abad’s remark wanting. "What is incredible is that Abad can say with a straight face there was nothing illegal or immoral about DAP. What is baseless is Abad’s persistent claim that DAP helped stimulate the economy when even the Commission on Audit (COA) says otherwise,” Quicho said. A COA report released last year showed that four government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) were slow or completely failed in releasing DAP funds. The state-owned firms reported to have unspent DAP funds were the National Dairy Authority (NDA), National Electrification Administration (NEA), Philippine Fisheries Development Authority (PFDA), and the Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS). Quicho also expressed doubts about whether the case filed against the budget secretary would prosper, as he again slammed the Office of the Ombudsman for employing selective justice. "But knowing the partiality and selectiveness of the Ombudsman, I have serious doubts if this will prosper,” said Quicho. The Vice President’s camp has repeatedly scored the Ombudsman’s seeming preferential treatment for administration allies, while fast tracking cases against the Binay family. "The Ombudsman is hell-bent in consolidating the pending complaints against the Vice President and to file a plunder case against him to showcase the administration’s discredited "tuwid na daan” promise even if it directly transgresses the Constitution,” Quicho previously said. Various youth groups filed plunder raps against Abad last year. Among the groups were Kabataan party-list, Youth Act Now! and National Union of Students of the Philippines. So far, the Ombudsman has failed to decide on these cases. The Supreme Court declared several provisions of the DAP as unconstitutional July last year. The latest plunder charge filed by Alentajan accused Abad of illegally transferring public funds "duly appropriated to one government agency to another without legislative authority, and feloniously awarded and released fifty million pesos each to the senators who voted for the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, or almost one billion pesos.”//