The proposed 2019 national budget of President Rodrigo Duterte ensures the holding of the election next year and allocates P6 billion for it, House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. said Tuesday.
The P6 billion is on top of the P12.4-billion budget for the preparatory activities for the 2019 elections that the government had earmarked for the Commission on Elections under this year’s P3.767-trillion General Appropriations Act, he said.
“This [P6 billion] is in the proposed 2019 budget submitted by the President,” Andaya said. “So the President’s budget is an anti-(no election) budget.”
Andaya said there is no stopping the midterm elections next year, and appealed to the President’s critics to stop peddling lies about a no-election scenario. He called such warnings “baseless” and said they were aimed at discrediting the government.
“The funding for the 2019 elections disprove conspiracy theorists of a no-el scenario. The funding for the May 2019 elections are available,” Andaya said.
Last week, Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo also rejected a no-el scenario and term extensions for elected officials, which her predecessor, Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez had pushed.
“No [I am not supporting no-el and] definitely I am not supporting term extension,” Arroyo said.
She also dismissed as black propaganda the claim of her critics that she would be appointed prime minister once the Constitution is amended to usher in a federal system of government.
Negros Occidental Rep. Alfredo Benitez, meanwhile, said the House will work closely with the Senate to find common ground on the Duterte administration’s push for federalism.
“We will work hand in hand with them and invite the Senate to convene as a constituent assembly so that we can make the first step in moving forward in this issue,” Benitez, head of the Visayan bloc in the House of Representatives, said.
Benitez also assured the public that the 2019 midterm polls will push through as scheduled.
“What we are saying right now is we are [not] proposing the idea of no election and we would rather work hand in hand with the Senate to push forward the proposed federal constitution,” Benitez said.
Benitez also said the House is “open” to the position of the Senate to vote separately in proposing amendments to the 1987 Constitution as a mode to effect federalism.
“If it means that we would accept the conditions of the Senate that we would vote separately, at this stage we are accepting that stand,” Benitez said.