The Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) noted that DBM announced the release of thefunds in time for the start of the campaign period for local candidates, saying that the release of “more than P24.7 billion in public funds for infrastructure and other projects under the Bottom Up Budgeting (BuB) for local government units (LGUs) was done in time for the start of the campaign period for local candidates.”
“BuB is bribery in broad daylight hatched by the Aquino camp to benefit Mar and LP bets,” the KMP said in a statement yesterday.
Introduced in the fiscal year 2012 budget deliberations, BuB was renamed as Grassroots Participatory Budgeting (GPB) in the 2015 budget. KMP said it “was recycled for use in Mar’s national campaigning with a promise to expand the BuB to P100-billion every year for countryside development or P1,000 per person depending on the population of each barangay, town and city.”
“BuB is the brainchild of Budget Secretary Butch Abad who is still very much liable for the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP),” said KMP Secretary General Antonio Flores.
Flores noted that under the BuB process, selected LGUs are asked to come up with P15 million worth of projects that they want to be funded by the national government, through consultations with local basic sector organizations (BSOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs).
He noted that progressive partylist organizations in Congress including Anakpawis Partylist, questioned the BuB mechanism and regarded it as unconstitutional as BuB “allows post-budget enactment modifications.”
“Both BuB and DAP were implemented only through DBM budget circulars which Abad issued with the authorization and knowledge of Aquino,” he said.
“BuB and DAP comes from the same vein of corruption-ridden, patronage politics-centric public expenditure which are among the expertise of Aquino and Abad,” Flores added.
The KMP accused LP of “blatantly using public funds to bolster Mar Roxas’s presidential campaign under the same ‘Daang Matuwid’ banner especially now that Roxas is trailing behind other presidential bets in various election surveys.”
“We know how government projects are funded and disbursed. BuB projects are mostly infrastructure or ‘hard projects’ packaged by DBM and Aquino allies as poverty alleviation projects. In reality, BuB projects are construction of local roads, bridges, multipurpose halls, health centers, covered courts, installation of water pumps, among other projects,” Flores stressed.
“Maraming kumikita sa mga ganitong proyekto, mula sa DBM, hanggang sa mga contractor pababa hanggang sa mga LGUs,” he added.
