Manila Times/Makati

President Benigno Aquino 3rd need not testify at the plunder trial of senator Ramon Bong Revilla Jr over the multibillion-peso pork barrel scam, Malacanang said yesterday.
Palace spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said Aquino has no personal knowledge of the alleged pork barrel scam.
“The requirement when you are a witness is that you have personal knowledge. So [what is our president’s personal knowledge about it]?” Lacierda told reporters in a news conference.
“Remember that what happened to senator Revilla dates back to 2007 to 2009. So what relevance does it have to the president],” he said.
In a 43-page pre-trial brief that he filed on Wednesday, Revilla listed Aquino as one of the witnesses he wanted to testify in his trial.
Lacierda said it will be interesting to know how the president and other members of the Cabinet could possibly prove Revilla’s defence that he did not personally gain from the pork barrel scam.
“How will their appearance or their testimony add any iota of defence or assistance to his claim that he did not profit [from the scam]?” he asked.
The palace official could not answer, however, when asked on whether the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan can subpoena the president and make him testify in Revilla’s defence.
“It will be the first time a sitting president is a witness,” Lacierda said.
“We will defer to the Sandiganbayan’s view on that particular request for summoning president Aquino to the witness stand,” he added.
Besides Aquino, Revilla’s lawyers also want former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, interior secretary Manuel Roxas 2nd, budget secretary Florencio Abad, justice secretary Leila de Lima and commission of audit chief Grace Pulido-Tan to take the witness stand.
Revilla is facing plunder and 16 counts of graft at the anti-graft court for allegedly pocketing over P224mn in kickbacks from projects funded by his pork barrel.
He and senator Jose Jinggoy Estrada, who was also charged with plunder, are detained at the Philippine National Police headquarters in Camp Crame in Quezon City.
Malacanang has said it will contest a decision by the Supreme Court (SC) that implied that officials who implemented the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) should be held criminally liable, saying cabinet officials who did something that benefited the economy should not be held accountable for acts that were deemed “unconstitutional”.
In a news briefing, its spokesman Edwin Lacierda said they “respectfully disagree” with the tribunal when it ruled that officials who disbursed public funds for projects done in good faith that eventually boosted the economy must be held criminally liable.
“You may declare certain acts unconstitutional but to declare an operative fact doctrine extending it beyond saying that it is unconstitutional and saying that we now have criminal liability, that is not something that is part of an effect of an operative fact doctrine,” Lacierda, a lawyer, told reporters.
He explained that the SC is yet to deal with criminal liability in any case involving a decision “on a particular provision in the GAA [General Appropriations Act] being declared unconstitutional”.
“The supreme court never went beyond saying ‘Oh, the budget secretary, the National Treasury is liable’. Never because in the time of [former budget secretary] Ben Diokno, the GAA, some GAA provisions were declared unconstitutional,” Lacierda said, adding that Diokno was never held criminally liable.
“Money was expended. But the supreme court never said ‘liable [is this guy], liable [is this other guy]’. Never did. And for that particular reason, this is the situation where the [SC] decision has put good men and women under fire and now accusing them of presumptively criminally liable,” he added.
Such “dissonance” in the SC ruling, Lacierda pointed out, has put the names of officials who were never implicated in any wrongdoing in bad light such as public works secretary Rogelio Singson and education secretary Armin Luistro.
The palace legal team reviewing the decision would seek to expunge “criminal liability” of the cabinet officials, including budget secretary Florencio Butch Abad, Lacierda said.