Bastardized free college tuition law

As one popular idiom goes: Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan. Simply put, many people will seek credit for success, but few will accept responsibility for failure. This is the case of Republic Act (RA) 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act that President Rodrigo Duterte signed into law last week.

The President signed the free college education bill last Aug. 3, a few hours before it was set to lapse into law.

No sooner than the ink dried on the newly signed RA 10931, everybody came out with their individual claims of having authored, pushed and sponsored it at the 17th Congress.

If RA 10931 is a child, he would be a son of a whore given the so many Senators and Congressmen claiming to be his father.

Now that RA 10931 saw the light of day, none of the many self-proclaimed fathers and mothers of this new law would like to come forward with funding support. At least, official commitment of funds out of their legislative allocations in the annual appropriations with the proposed 2018 budget bill now pending review in Congress.

With powers of the purse that they in Congress possess, we have not heard any firm commitment by any one of them. That is because by doing so, it would be tantamount to admission that the lawmakers still enjoy “pork-barrel” allocations in the annual budget. The Supreme Court (SC) declared illegal in 2013 the annual budget provision called as Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) but was actually “pork-barrel” allocation per lawmakers.

After he was openly blocked by his top economic advisers, President Duterte obviously overruled them. His economic managers led by Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Benjamin Diokno recommended veto of the Congress-approved free tuition bill. While it is a very popular measure, they argued the free tuition each year for all state colleges and universities (SCUs) may not be sustainable to implement this without a steady source of state funding support.

A few days later, President Duterte himself admitted he signed the free tuition law fully knowing it is still without a budget to bankroll it. “Congress knew there was no budget. It reached my desk and I know there was no money for it. Let’s sign it. Fine. The money? That will be our problem once the measure is enrolled,” the President cited.

Himself a one-term Congressman, the former Davao City Mayor confessed with candor he is now in a quandary where to get money to implement the measure. “That’s the problem now. I want to ask you. I want to consult you about it. I don’t know. Let’s see,” the President told reporters last Monday on where to get the funding for the law.

In a meeting last week at Malacanang, the Chief Executive pointed to unnamed Senators who he said were persistent in prodding him to ignore the veto recommendation to him but sign into law the free tuition bill instead. This was a meeting with Senators led by Senate president Aquilino Pimentel III whom the President sought to update about the need to increase budget support to the military’s on-going Marawi siege.

Funding for the free college education law will not be a problem if the government taps unused appropriations and lawmakers give up their pork barrel in the proposed 2018 national budget, Sen. Panfilo Lacson suggested. Lacson, vice chairman of the Senate committee on finance, made this suggestion as both the Senate and the House of Representatives started deliberations on the proposed P3.7-trillion national budget for 2018.

The new law, which mandates free education in SUCs, local universities and colleges (LUCs), and state-run technical and vocational (tech-voc) schools to qualified students, is estimated to cost around P25 billion to P30 billion a year. The law did not explicitly provide for appropriations to allow the government flexibility in allocating specific amounts every fiscal year.

This was why Diokno, one of the more vocal of the economic managers, pushed for its veto by the President, calculating a steep P100 billion needed for its implementation to sustain it at least during the remaining five years of the Duterte administration.

Diokno himself once served as chairman of the Board of Trustees at the Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM). Formerly economics professor from the University of the Philippines (UP) for a long while, Diokno knows from experience how government subsidized tuition is carried out with success if properly supported. Unlike UP which is one of the SUCs, the PLM is funded and supported by the city government of Manila. Exclusive to Manila-born and certified resident students of the city, the PLM hosts city scholars after qualifying entrance examinations and obliging them to maintain standard grades until they finish four-year college. 

Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada first appointed Diokno as PLM president in 2013 before President Duterte named him in June last year to his Cabinet as DBM Secretary. Actually, this is his second stint at DBM. He was first appointed as Budget chief in July,1998 during the shortened Estrada presidency.

While everyone in Congress agrees to find funding in the proposed 2018 budget for the landmark law, Lacson echoed concern that budgets of other agencies urgently needing funds also would likely be cut and sacrificed. As a natural consequence of realigning priorities, it would drastically alter the original budget proposals under the budget bill as submitted by the President to Congress.

Lacson recalled the Senate was able to realign some P8.3 billion from alleged pork barrel allocations in some congressional districts in Mindanao in this year’s budget. The same questionable appropriations, however, were restored through cuts in various provisions, including the calamity fund, from P37 billion to P22 billion.

But Davao City Rep. Karlo Alexei Nograles, chairman of the House committee on appropriations, gave assurance his panel will “allot the necessary funding to finance the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.”

Commission on Higher Education (CHED) commissioner J. Prospero de Vera was candid to say the free tuition law would be implemented by next school year yet. This is because it will take CHED time to craft the implementing rules and regulations. De Vera cited a staggered implementation of the free tuition law could be “win-win solution” to the funding problems for now.

What a bastard life for free college tuition law. Sired by all but no one wants to nurture it.