PDAF: Let the Truth Out!
The Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP) reaffirms the constitutional principle: public office is a public trust. Public funds ought to be used with utmost prudence, responsibility, transparency and accountability. CEAP condemns the COA-confirmed systemic and systematic diversion of public funds for personal gain rooted in the existence of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and its apparently interminable penchant for misuse and abuse, not confined to the alleged illegal activities of fugitive Ms. Janet Lim-Napoles. Incredibly, responsible bodies in the House of Representatives and in the Senate refuse its investigation and the Aquino Administration refuses its abolition. It is an appalling state of affairs against the backdrop of a government that had done so well in rallying the citizenry to reform corrupt and crooked ways on the daan na matuwid.
CEAP supports the call for an impartial and comprehensive investigation of the PDAF and all concerned. We must know whether a reformed PDAF can still be a way of bringing the blessings of good government to the most needy of our people, or whether it is so structured that its corrupt misuse in our political culture is inevitable, and so its abolition imperative.
While the misuse of the PDAF goes into the tens of billions of pesos and funds scandalous luxury and nefarious manipulation, those ultimately misused are people who are poor and suffer deeply in their poverty.
We call on all reform-minded citizens to support this cause – first, by renewing personal contact with the poor and gaining insight into how these irregularities have hurt real people. Let us then bring to justice those who instrumentalize the poor for corrupt ends.
We support the Citizen’s Initiative to march to Luneta and to other places where there will be mobilizations on August 26 (Monday). Let the truth finally out relative to the PDAF! Make its use totally transparent and accountable! Or abolish it! With genuine consolation in or fear of the Lord, let us recall his words: “Whatever you have done or not done to one of these, the least of my brothers and sisters, that you have done or nor done to me.” (Cf. Ma. 25).
