Following the Supreme Court decision declaring the unconstitutionality of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the House of Representatives said it will not contest  the ruling and will focus instead on legislating laws and exercising its oversight functions.

National Unity Party (NUP) vice president Elpidio Barzaga Jr., (Dasmarinas City), however, said that a clarification should be made regarding certain cases where Notices of Cash Allotment (NCAs) have already been issued on PDAF allocations long disbursed before the Supreme Court ruling took effect.

The high court has said that  its unanimous decision against the PDAF was  “immediately executory but prospective in effect.”

The SC spokesman, Theodore Te, said this means that the ruling “takes effect now but affects only acts after the decision.”  Te said  this involves the “operative facts doctrine. It does not void or undo all acts done before the law was struck down.”

Barzaga cited, for instance, the case of one of his constituents, Maribela Batoc, a cancer patient, who was refused chemotherapy treatment by the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) despite being a recipient of a guarantee letter worth P20,000 from his PDAF allocation.

The lawmaker  said the patient should not have been affected by the SC ruling because his PDAF at the PGH has long been disbursed and covered by an NCA.

Barzaga noted that what the SC disallowed when it declared the PDAF  unconstitutional is the use of the Fund’s  allocations  for the second semester of 2013 in the amount of P13.2 billion, which have remained unreleased and do not cover those with NCAs.

“PGH is not honoring their contract with me when they disallowed the use of my PDAF,  which have already been deposited to them. I’ll be filing cases against PGH and the suit which I shall file shall include as plaintiffs the patients whom they did not provide the medical treatment with the cash coming from my PDAF, which has already been deposited with PGH long time ago.

“As of today I have a cash deposit balance of P1,524,424 with the PGH coming from the first tranche of my PDAF of the current year and not covered by the decision rendered by the SC,” Barzaga explained.

Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, the honorary NUP chairman, has asked Health Secretary Enrique Ona to explain the department’s sudden decision to turn away indigent patients in government hospitals with guarantee letters funded by the PDAF. The Speaker said these patients have serious illnesses  and can afford treatment only with the help of the PDAF allocations of lawmakers. 

Belmonte said it is not only the PGH that has refused treatment  to their poor constituents.

“We need to clarify it to Sec. Ona. It is hard to do this via individual hospitals. It’s not just PGH,” Belmonte said.

Barzaga said he expected the justices of the high court to succumb to public pressure into declaring the PDAF system unconstitutional after it was demonized by critics.

“I have expected that because the public pressures in the form of protest and also the PDAF scam have actually affected the mind-set of the justices of the SC. They saw only the bad side of the PDAF but not the good effects. The beneficiaries of our PDAF like our scholars and our sick constituents are now feeling the effects of the abolition of PDAF,” Barzaga explained.