Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte on Tuesday denied allegations that he and former Speaker Alan Cayetano were involved in the P70 billion slash from the pension and gratuity fund of retired military and police personnel in the last year’s national budget.
Villafuerte made the statement in response to the accusation of Deputy Speaker and Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab during the plenary session Monday night, dismissing the claim as “absurd.”
“The congressman should be listening to what he is blabbering because he would probably say he had misquoted himself if only he could,” Villafuerte, a former deputy speaker, said in a statement.
Ungab accused the previous leadership of the House of Representatives of allegedly manipulating the 2020 national budget, which resulted in budget cuts totaling P209 billion, including the more than P70 billion meant for military and police pension.
Ungab was the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations when Congress approved in 2019 the P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020 under the leadership of Cayetano.
Villafuerte squarely rejected Ungab’s allegation.
“First, there was no such push by the then-Speaker or by myself at the bicameral committee talks for the 2020 GAA bill. If I recall correctly, if there was such a move, it waas probably initiated by the Senate, not by the House contingent, let alone by the Speaker or by myself,” Villafuerte said.
“Second, I was just the deputy speaker for finance at that time and it was Congressman Ungab, as the then-chairman of the House appropriations committee, who was the House’s honcho, so to speak, at the negotiations as head of the House contingent. Hence, how could I or the Speaker have inserted or removed anything in the budget talks when neither of us was physically present in the bicam process and he was the team leader?”
“Third, granting for the sake of argument that we had done such a thing, how could that have happened without Congressman Ungab knowing it as head of the House contingent and chief negotiator?”
Villafuerte said if the accusation was true, then Ungab should have objected to the move back then.
“Why didn’t he object to it back then, considering that he was the chief negotiator? Why make such a fuss now or more than a year later? …If that had indeed taken place and he now claims he was clueless about it during the bicam talks, doesn’t that speak volumes about his competence–or lack of it–as appropriations committee chairman and head of the House contingent?” Villafuerte said.