Panfilo Lacson calls for ombudsman’s probe on budget insertions

MANILA, Philippines — It may be time for Ombudsman Samuel Martires to conduct a probe following various allegations of multibillion-peso insertions in the proposed P3.7-trillion national budget for 2019, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said yesterday.

Lacson said he found an unlikely ally in House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. for revealing that a single contractor hogged no less than 30 flood control projects worth billions of pesos.

Lacson and Andaya recently had a verbal tussle over the senator’s allegations that a certain lawmaker inserted P1.9 billion in projects in the proposed budget in violation of a 2013 Supreme Court ruling declaring the Priority Development Assistance Fund as unconstitutional.

Lacson said both the House of Representatives and the Office of the Ombudsman can conduct their own probes into the allegations.

“Expose pa more! A single contractor bagging 30 flood control projects worth billions of pesos calls for a congressional inquiry/ombudsman investigation. Thank God I found an unlikely ‘ally’ in (Rep). Andaya,” Lacson said in a post on his Twitter account.

He was referring to Andaya’s expose in a privilege speech on Monday that a single proprietorship based in Bulacan cornered the flood control projects in provinces including Sorsogon and Catanduanes.

Lacson last week bared that a lawmaker got at least P1.9 billion worth of projects in a congressional district in Camarines Sur but did not name Andaya.

When Andaya said the insertions could be a case of “misplaced generosity,” Lacson said the lawmakers concerned can show good faith by declining such amounts.

Gloria Arroyo: Nothing to explain

Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who once wanted Lacson arrested and stand trial during her presidency, has nothing to explain with regard to the latter’s expose that she got P2.4 billion in pork barrel fund allocations. 

The former president refused to comment on Lacson’s accusations, saying she “cannot make allegations about somebody else’s motives just as it is not right for them to make allegations about me.”

“Why would I deprive the people of my district? I am only upper middle-class as far as the allocations are concerned. There are 60 to 90 more (members of the House of Representatives) who got bigger allocations than my district,” she told reporters over lunch, when she hosted a Christmas party. 

Without naming names, but obviously referring to her predecessor Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez who was booted out by his House colleagues in July this year, the Pampanga lawmaker said the previous leadership “has bigger, multiples of the budget of my district.” 

Arroyo lamented to media that she is being unfairly criticized and singled out even if she is just doing her job as the representative of the second district of Pampanga, her home province.

In the House-approved 2019 General Appropriations Bill, Arroyo’s district ranked 60th while the office of the majority leader ranked 110th in terms of appropriations for the Department of Public Works and Highways. – With Delon Porcalla