The minority bloc in the House of Representatives on Tuesday said erstwhile Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno is not yet off the hook in relation to the ongoing congressional investigation on the P75billion alleged insertions into the 2019 national budget and other questionable budget practices.
House Minority Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, chairman of the House committee on public accounts, said this following Diokno’s appointment by President Rodrigo Duterte to replace late Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr.
At a news conference, Suarez said his panel will continue the investigation on Diokno that the House committees on rules and appropriations initiated.
“Diokno has pending issues at the Lower House. There is no closure yet as far as the House probe on alleged irregularities in the budget preparation is concerned,” Suarez said.
“I will continue hearing [Diokno’s budget practices]. [I’ll be] taking advantage of my few remaining months in Congress,” he added.
Senator Panfilo Lacson had vowed to raise “a big legal issue” before his colleagues in the Senate after he accused House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of realignments in the Department of Health’s budget for her supposedly “favored” congressmen.
Arroyo “has no business or legal authority to prepare and impose the menu list of the Department of Health appropriations for Health Facilities Enhancement Program worth P25 million in individual allocations for her favored congressmen,” said Lacson.
However, the House contingent to the bicameral conference committee on the national budget “does not take orders from the Speaker,” thus she can not be behind the realignment of P25 million from the DOH budget, Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. said.
Andaya, the chairman of the House appropriations committee, defended Arroyo and said the Senate President and the Speaker “are not directly involved in the bicameral committee discussions.”
“Responsibility rests on the Bicam conferees,” said Andaya, who asked Senator Loren Legarda, chairperson of the Senate committee on finance, to hold a joint press conference aimed at promoting transparency in the P3.757-trillion 2019 national budget following Lacson’s statement.
Suarez stressed the House may still invite Diokno “if there is a need” despite the latter’s non-appearance in the previous hearings.
COOP NATCCO party-list Rep. Anthony Bravo, a member of the minority bloc, said he expects the new secretary of the DBM—rumored to be Government Service Insurance System chairman Rolando Macasaet, to cooperate on their inquiry.
“Documents are still there in the DBM. And now that there will be a new secretary to be appointed by the President. I am looking forward that secretary will be showing us all the documents for the purpose of transparency,” said Bravo, who joined Suarez in the news conference.
Earlier, Andaya said the panel of Suarez will continue hearing the P75-billion insertions of Diokno and will call his Chief of Staff, Budget Undersecretary Amenah Pangandaman, and engineer Glenn Degal, a technical expert assigned at the programming division of the Department of Public Works and Highways-Planning Service.
Instead of citing Diokno in contempt and compelling his presence to the congressional inquiry, Andaya said the committee would now focus in the filing of criminal complaints against the erstwhile Budget chief and others for allegedly giving undue advantage to the Aremar Construction owned by his in-laws’ family.
The original investigating panel on Diokno’s questionable budget practices that he vehemently denied was the House committee on rules when Andaya was still its chairman, being the former House Majority Leader.