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MALACAÑANG on Thursday said it had nothing to do with Congress’ move to slash the budget of lawmakers who were unfriendly towards the Duterte administration.
“There is a separation of powers. Congress has exclusive and primary jurisdiction in the preparation and approval of the budget,” Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque said in a news briefing.
“We had nothing to do with whatever decision both houses of Congress had on the alleged deprivation of projects as far as opposition congressmen are concerned. That’s something that should be addressed to the leadership of both houses of Congress,” he added.
On Wednesday, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno said lawmakers opposing President Rodrigo Duterte won’t be getting zero funding for their districts, but would get lower allocations than those allied with the administration.
“Allies will get more projects in their districts, in the projects they identified,” Diokno said during the bi-monthly ‘Breakfast with Ben’ media forum in Manila.
“There will be a distinction, those with the administration and those who are not,” he said, adding that the appropriation for some districts whose representatives in Congress aren’t allies might be reduced.
Diokno, who admitted that the budget was “the most political tool for legislation,” said the practice of allies getting the lion’s share of the budget had been in place long before the Duterte administration.
He added that it was Congress that decides collectively how funds are allocated.
Under the present set-up, lawmakers are still free to identify their pet projects for their districts, upon consultation with other stakeholders as well.
“This is not pork,” said Diokno, who immediately brushed off the comparisons with the discretionary Priority Development Assistance Fund that the Supreme Court ruled as illegal.
To guard against unauthorized releases, lawmakers would still have to request from the departments, particularly the DBM for the implementation of these programs, Diokno said.
He insisted however, that the administration have been compliant with the ruling of the Supreme Court “against post-enactment activities”—referring to the SC’s landmark decisions affirming the unconstitutionality of the PDAF and the Disbursement Acceleration Program under the previous administration.
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, meanwhile, challenged opposition Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman to account for his P3.8-billion allocation for projects in the past.
“Also, let me point out that Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, a leader of the opposition in Congress, has projects worth a total of P3.8 billion in his district. We would be very happy to hear from him where this huge funding has gone,” he said.
Lagman said Alvarez’s claim was “utterly preposterous.”
“How could an opposition representative propose and be accorded this amount of projects?” he asked.
“It was the Department of Public Works and Highways under the Duterte administration’s build, build and build policy which proposed and caused to be included in the President’s national expenditure program the bulk of other essential infrastructure projects intended for my district, which subsequently formed part of the General Appropriations Bill.”
The DPWH’s proposla was not his initiative or request, he said.
“The implementation of infrastructure projects in my district is completely aboveboard and the funds are fully accounted for by DPWH and the Commission of Audit,” Lagman added.
Lagman lamented that at least 24 members of the House of Representatives critical of the Duterte administration would not receive any allocation for their projects under the 2018 P3.767-trillion GAA.
Alvarez said the funds that should go to the 24 lawmakers who were given zero-budget under next year’s national budget would be used instead to finance free college tuition and pay increases for military and uniformed personnel in the government.
“I mean what I say and I am not in the habit of saying one thing and doing another. If there’s money, then I’ll see to it that it would be properly allocated. As much as possible, once funding for a project has been approved, then it is good to go,” Alvarez said.
“But in extraordinary cases we have to re-allocate funds for other priorities, such as education and the welfare of policemen and soldiers. This is what happened in the 2018 budget,” he added.
At the same time, Alvarez accused the leftist Makabayan bloc getting funds from “revolutionary taxation” by the communist rebels.
“According to the military, in southern Mindanao alone, the NPA [New People’s Army] collects close to P500 million yearly in revolutionary taxes. This is plain and simple extortion,” Alvarez said.
“We have not heard from the Makabayan bloc a clear and unequivocal condemnation of revolutionary taxation, leading us to suspect that they either directly or indirectly benefit from it,” he added. With PNA