MANILA – Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile rejected Friday the findings of a Commission on Audit report that said he disbursed over P900 million in pork barrel funds from 2007-2009. In a press briefing, Enrile said the pork barrel amounts attributed to him are “distorted and misleading” since they came from missing and incomplete records from the Department of Budget and Management. He said his own investigation on the records of the special allotment release orders (SAROS) issued by the DBM showed that P325 million in projects conducted by other lawmakers “were attributed to me as part of my PDAF in 2009 alone.” The legislators are: Senator Rodolfo Biazon - P20 million Senator Chiz Escudero - P20 million Sen. Jinggoy Estrada - P50 million Sen. Lito Lapid - P42 million Sen. Loren Legarda - P33 million Sen. Mar Roxas – P20 million Sen. Miriam Santiago – P50 million Congressmen-members of the Commission on Appointments - P90 million Total - P325 million “The abovementioned legislators merely requested for my endorsement as then Senate President for the release of funds from the various projects under their own PDAF,” he said. Enrile said the leaders and offices of both Houses of Congress including the chairs of the House appropriations committee and Senate committee on finance are allocated additional amounts over and above their regular allocations for priority development assistance funds (PDAF). Each senator is currently given yearly PDAF allocations of P200 million, while congressmen are given P70 million each. Enrile also noted that the leaders of the House appropriations committee and the Senate finance committee confer with each other and with the budget secretary “as to the amounts that are agreed to be distributed either as pork barrel allocations or budgetary insertions.” “This is a fact. The PDAF and the VILP do not represent the totality of each legislator’s congressional initiatives.” He said Senate President Franklin Drilon had “correctly pointed out that the actual release of the pork barrel was a prerogative of the President.” “Therefore the PDAF or pork barrel is not really the ‘equalizer’ that it purports to be. The system confers upon the executive the power and the discretion to either ‘deprive or bless’ any legislator, to slash his pork barrel, to delay each release or to deprive him altogether or to grant amounts over and above the budgeted amounts for each member of Congress,” he said. ANC, August 23, 2013
