SC junks petition questioning P2.6-T 2015 budget

MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court (SC) yesterday junked the petition filed by former Iloilo Rep. Augusto Syjuco assailing the P2.606-trillion national budget for this year over alleged lump sum appropriations.

In their first session for the year, justices of the high court decided to dismiss outright the petition seeking to stop and declare unconstitutional the 2015 General Appropriations Act (GAA) signed by President Aquino late last month.

The SC said Syjuco’s arguments so lacked merit that it did not even need the Palace and Congress to answer the petition.

It held that the petition was premature as it failed to allege any specific expenditure, fund release or any executive act or issuance to such effect.

“Petitioner, suing as a taxpayer, has not claimed any injury to him or to taxpayers in general but has only posed hypothetical or feigned problems or mere academic questions,” read the ruling.

In his supplemental petition filed last month upon President Aquino’s signing of the GAA, Syjuco also questioned the supplemental budget for this year.

But the SC ruled that petitioner failed to show any substantial grounds to have the supplemental budget declared unconstitutional other than his invocation of the previous rulings on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

“In both decisions, the court had not passed on the constitutionality of a supplemental budget,” the court further said in citing petitioner’s misplaced premise.

The high tribunal, however, has not acted on a similar petition filed last week by the group led by former Biliran Rep. Glenn Chong.

In a nutshell, petitioners assailed provisions in the 2015 GAA covering over a trillion pesos or almost half of the P2.606-trillion national budget that are lump sum and discretionary funds, which the high court had declared unconstitutional in its earlier ruling on the pork barrel system in Congress.

The group further alleged that the lump sum appropriations in the budget include: the P2-billion contingent fund; P1-billion allocated for rehabilitation and reconstruction program; P31.1 billion in allocations to local government units; P7.4-billion international commitment funds; P118.1-billion miscellaneous personnel benefits funds; P140.6-billion pension and gratuity funds and P372.9-billion debt service fund.

They further alleged that the “restructuring of the definitions of savings and augmentation and the provisions on utilization of savings” and “restructuring for the utilization of unprogrammed appropriations” were the practices under the controversial DAP which was also voided by the SC last year.

Lastly, petitioners questioned the “legislators’ insertions” in the GAA amounting to P47 billion, which they said were similar to pork barrel funds.