'Ghost' solon Luis Abalos is Mandaluyong's Benhur

MANILA, Philippines - While the Commission on Audit (COA) was clueless on who "Luis Abalos" was as listed among the recipients of congressional pork barrel released from 2007 to 2009, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) had the answer all along.

President Benigno Aquino III said in a television interview aired Wednesday night that Luis Abalos is actually current Mandaluyong City Mayor Benjamin "Benhur" Abalos Jr. who served in the House of Representatives within that period.

"Mali lang 'yung binigay na first name," Aquino said, citing a "confirmation" of Budget Secretary Hemino Abad.

The President added that the mistake could have been committed either by the DBM or COA in listing a so-called non-lawmaker who was allotted P20 million for Various Infrastructures including Local Projects (VILP) funds as seen in COA's special audit report.

"As reflected in the summary of the releases from VILP provided to the team by DBM, the P32.347 billion were released out of the allocation of 356 legislators and of a certain Luis Abalos who is not, however, a member of the 13th and 14th Congress," COA said in the audit summary.

Lifted from the Commission on Audit's special report on the VILP and the Priority Development Assistance Fund that bared lawmakers' alleged misuse of billions of fund.

COA Chairperson Grace Pulido Tan had also said that the DBM did not know at first who Abalos was.

"They could not explain that to us," Tan said in the press conference last Friday when the report was released.

Benhur Abalos, 51, is the son of former Commission on Elections chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr. who had been accused of having an involvement in the ZTE national broadband network deal scam.

Another DBM mistake

Abad had also admitted in a separate television interview that the agency he heads committed a "clerical error" in listing Compostela Valley legislator Manuel "Way Kurat" Zamora to have received P3.114 billion of pork in 2007.

He said that DBM, before his term, used the same special allotment release order number that was assigned both to Zamora's P500,000 building project and to a P3-billion Public Works and Highways Project.

The budget chief said that the COA recorded both projects as one and the same.

The COA special report combined with reports on an elaborate scheme of dummy projects and non-government organizations caused public outrage, which heightened calls for the scrapping of the pork barrel from the both houses of Congress.