LP using P100-B public funds for campaign – UNA

MANILA, Philippines – The United Nationalist Alliance (UNA) of Vice President Jejomar Binay accused yesterday the Liberal Party (LP) of using P100 billion in government funds to buy votes through the bottom-up budgeting or BUB program.

UNA spokesman Mon Ilagan said about P25 billion was inserted in the 2016 national budget for the program and is now at LP’s disposal for election purposes.

“The LP’s vote-buying through BUB is so terrible. This is the biggest pork barrel in election history,” Ilagan noted. “It appears that the public money is being used by the administration party to bribe the electorate.”

At the National Assembly of the Liga ng mga Barangay sa Pilipinas and Forum on the Bottom Up Budgeting the other day, LP standard-bearer Mar Roxas promised to give barangay officials access to as much as P100 billion in funds each year.

“No matter how Mar and LP call it, it is still legalized vote-buying because it is meant to influence the people’s voting preferences... BUB can also be called ‘Bribe Ur Barangay’ – this is their model of legal vote-buying,” Ilagan claimed.

He said the administration is so desperate that it has to resort to “wholesale bribery” by using BUB and the conditional cash transfer program just to make sure its candidates win in the May 9 polls.

“The ‘Bribe Ur Barangay’ is a new localized version of pork-barrel politics. The power of the LP’s purse is energized by the administration’s CCT and BUB projects. The BUB’s rationale is no longer developmental but ‘envelopmental,’ no longer economics, but politics,” Ilagan, a former mayor of Cainta town in Rizal, said.

Citing a study conducted by ABS-CBN Investigative and Research Group, Ilagan said only 10 provinces were identified, or have received 27 percent of BUB fund. Among the areas were vote-rich provinces.

Cebu, which has more than 2.7 million voters, received P3 billion; Negros Occidental, which has more than 1.6 million voters, received P2.3 billion; Pangasinan, which received P2 billion, has about 1.8 million registered voters; Iloilo province, which received P1.7 billion, has more than 1.3 million voters.

Other provinces that received BUB funds in their GAA allocations are: Camarines Sur (P2.2 billion): Leyte (P2 billion); Bohol (P2 billion); Quezon (P1.7 billion); Negros Oriental (P1.6 billion) and Bukidnon (P1.6 billion).

It was the camp of presidential candidate Rodrigo Duterte who first accused the LP of bribing local chief executives via the government’s BUB program.

Malacañang and LP officials denied the allegations, maintaining that BUB directly benefits the people through local government units and people’s organizations.

Meanwhile, Duterte accused Roxas of corruption “having been involved in anomalous deals” while heading the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) and later the Department of the Interior and Local Government.

“Roxas is not traveling on a straight road. He is traveling the road to corruption,” Duterte said referring to the LP party slogan of daang matuwid (straight path).

He urged Roxas not to make a fool of the Filipino people, saying “Huwag na tayong mag bulahan (Let’s not fool ourselves). You are simply corrupt…especially as DOTC secretary.”

Should he become president, Duterte said he would pursue such cases against Roxas and others who are believed to be involved in anomalous deals.

“Somebody has to be answerable for all the mess. The ombudsman should go after them, including Roxas,” Duterte said referring, among others, to an exposé of The STAR columnist Jarius Bondoc on Roxas and his billionaire friend Francis Eric Gutierrez, who owns eight jets and a helicopter worth P2.3 billion.

Duterte alleged that Roxas used the jets and helicopters in the campaign even if Gutierrez is “into illegal mining in Mindanao.”

He also cited the $11.5-million Metro Rail Transit maintenance contract between the DOTC and the Philippine Trans Rail Management and Services Corp. (PH Trams) that was negotiated when Roxas was still the DOTC secretary. – With Edith Regalado