If Noynoy wants to be remembered as a statesman rather than as a politician, his best judgment would be to grant the outstanding demand of the people. Which is: to abolish the DAP or the presidential pork barrel system. This is his most formidable defense against any probe or query relating to the legality or morality of the DAP. This is his best defense!
Zarate said that while the Constitution allows the President to realign savings based on the approved budget items, he said that the DAP “created new projects not allocated in the General Appropriations and therefore must be approved by Congress.”
The bishop said “instead of political negotiation which is closer to the ‘straight path’, the Aquino government intentionally took the ‘warpath’ in the Zamboanga crisis. Aquino’s war has clearly led to a bigger problem than its intended outcome.”
Matigsalug leader Cristina Lantao said troops from the Army’s 25th Infantry Battalion arrived in their community in Sitio Bermuda, Purok 4 on Wednesday and told them they would occupy their village while conducting a three-week operation against the New People’s Army.
An activist from Youth Act Now calls for the prosecution of officials involved in corruption and misuse of pork during a picket Wednesday along Jones Circle in Acacia & CM Recto junction. Anti-pork rallyists slam the Aquino’s Presidential Social Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) which they say promote patronage politics. (davaotoday.com photo by Ace R. Morandante)
A kid reads a protester’s placard slamming ‘bureaucrat capitalism’ or the abuse of government position for personal gain, during Wednesday’s protest by Youth Act Now, which condemned the retention of Presidential pork barrel known as Presidential Social Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). (davaotoday.com photo by Ace R. Morandante)
She said the Aquino administration has resorted to giving an old mechanisms a new name that does not guarantee transparency.
Librado-Trinidad said this situation, where elite politicians are infighting among themselves, leaves people no choice but to intensify their protests.
“I believe our fight against corruption and bureaucrat capitalism must intensify as no one can effectively carry out this fight but us,” she said.
Prof. Ali Ayub, the secretary-general of the National Ulama Conference of the Philippines in the Zambasulta Region said his group and civil society organizations offered viable options to the Crisis Management Committee to break the standoff sooner between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) followers of Chairman Nur Misuari, and state security forces in Zamboanga.
The death of a peasant leader on September 13 has left the community of Barangay Kauswagan, a highway village of Loreto town, Agusan del Sur, in fear, scared of the possibility of another victim.
