House restores CHR budget

MANILA, Philippines — Amid a public outcry, the House of Representatives last night restored the proposed 2018 budgets of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and National Commission on Indigenous Peoples (NCIP).

The decision was reached during a meeting among Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas, appropriations committee chairman Rep. Karlo Nograles of Davao City and the  heads of the three agencies.?It was made just hours after Alvarez told

the Kapihan sa Manila Bay that he would not agree to the Senate proposal for a full restoration of the CHR budget and would even take the risk of having this year’s out- lay reenacted or recycled if senators insisted on their proposal.

“There will be a long discussion on it. I do not discount the possibility that the P1,000 budget will be increased, but the restoration, it is farfetched,” Alvarez said at the forum.

If the 2017 budget is re-enacted, the CHR will again receive P725 million, higher than the P678 million proposed by Malacañang for 2018, but still less than half of the P1.7 billion requested by tge commission.

The decision to restore the three com- missions’ appropriations also came hours after opposition Rep. Edcel Lagman wrote Alvarez pleading for full restoration.

Lagman told the House leader that most likely, the Senate would insist on restoring funding for the three agencies and it is the senators that would get the credit for it.

Both Alvarez and President Duterte have been critical of the CHR. They accused the agency of being partisan by focusing on the spate of killings in the government’s war against drugs and ignoring other cases of abuse.

The Speaker also earlier demanded the resignation of CHR Chairman Chito Gascon and its commissioners and suspended ERC chief Jose Vicente Salazar.

In a statement last night, Nograles said Alvarez and Fariñas have authorized him to include the full funding for CHR, ERC and NCIP in the proposed 2018 budget bill that would be put to a final and third-reading vote next week.

During the meeting with the heads of the three commissions, he said Gascon agreed that the CHR should expand its investiga- tions on human rights violations to include not only those perpetrated by state agents but other groups as well, like terrorists, rebels and criminals.

“The Speaker basically told Chairman Gascon that we are not the enemy. The Duterte government is not the enemy. We are one with the CHR in the fight against all forms of human rights violation, but they must start looking also at the violations committed by criminals and insurgents,” he said.

He added that as for the ERC and the NCIP, Nograles said that Alvarez and Fariñas secured their assurance that they would start taking all the necessary steps to fight graft and corruption and to carry out the full mandate of their respective offices.