House to obey Duterte on Road Board abolition

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives blinked and is now supporting the abolition of the corruption-tainted Road Board, following President Duterte’s wish.

“The President has spoken. We heard his message to the House. We will act based on his guidance. As an institution, we will heed the President’s call,” Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. said yesterday.

With the Road Board controversy resolved, he said the House could “finally concentrate on the scrutiny of the 2019 budget, parked pork and P75-billion DBM (Department of Budget and Management) insertions (in the budget).”

Senate President Vicente Sotto III said he received information that Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is ready to sign the bill for the abolition of the Road Board, which oversees funds from the Motor Vehicle User’s Charge (MVUC) that are supposed to be used exclusively for road maintenance and improvement of road drainage, installation of traffic lights and road safety devices, as well as air pollution control.

The Senate and the House of Representatives are at odds on the issue of abolition of the Road Board and Duterte took the side of the Senate in pushing for the abolition of the Road Board, saying revenue from the road user’s tax had become a milking cow of corrupt officials.

Sotto said the Presidential Legal Liaison Office should work for the transmittal of the approved copy of the bill for the signature of the President.

However, Andaya indicated that the House would still not send to Duterte House Bill 7436, which proposed the abolition of the controversial agency managing billions in MVUC collections.

“All is well. The public, however, needs to understand not just the abolition phase but also what is sought after that. If the President wants an abolition of the Road Board, let it be a real abolition. No residues. No Three Road Kings,” he said, referring to the secretaries of public works and highways, transportation and environment and natural resources, who would reportedly control the funds after the Board is abolished.

For him, Duterte should send “a better bill and certify it as urgent.”

“The House, convinced of its merits, will approve it without delay,” Andaya said.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon disagreed with this view, saying there is no valid reason for further delaying its transmittal to the Office of the President.

“The bill should be sent immediately to the President’s desk for his action. We should let the President decide. It is a political decision. Since the Senate already adopted the House version, the House lost jurisdiction over the bill and could no longer validly reconsider the approval of the measure which will abolish the Road Board,” he explained.

He added that the Senate’s decision to adopt the House version of the bill “rendered a bicameral conference unnecessary.”

Andaya said the congressmen are for including MVUC collections in the general fund and are against treating the money as “an off-budget item that will be spent by one person in an un-transparent way.”?“The proceeds need to be included as a line-item fund in the annual budget of the DPWH in the General Appropriations Act (GAA). This way, the real and full funding level of the DPWH is reflected clearly, unlike today when MVUC spending is segregated and treated as a non-budget expenditure,” Andaya pointed out.

He added that the House would prefer “that non-road user activities like garbage collection be stricken off the spending menu.”

Over the past years, the Commission on Audit (COA) has consistently noted the Board’s apparent non-compliance in the utilization of MVUC funds. Sotto said the body is collecting about P12 billion a year in road users taxes. For this year, he added, COA questioned the use of about P90 billion of the over P160-billion fund.

From 2001 to May 2018, the total collection for MVUC reached P166.18 billion. At least P136.87 billion of that amount have been released.

With the abolition of the Road Board, Sotto said the collected road users’ taxes should be included in the GAA, which has line items and clear dispensation of budget.

Drilon said the abolition of the Road Board is critical in the government’s fight against corruption, adding that the body has become a breeding ground for corruption and inefficiency.

The Senate on Sept. 12, 2018 adopted the House version to dispense with the bicameral conference. Later that day, the House rescinded its approval on third reading of its own version.

At that point, however, the only remaining steps to complete the legislative process were the printing and signing of the enrolled copy of the bill as a matter of course and its presentment to the President for approval, Drilon explained.

Last week, the Senate, upon Drilon’s motion, unanimously adopted a resolution urging the Office of the President to order the Road Board not to release funds from the MVUC, following the passage of the abolition bill by both houses of Congress.

In 2017, the President called on Congress to abolish the Road Board and transfer its functions to the appropriate department. Both houses responded by immediately passing their own versions of the bill.

According to Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, the board still has an unspent MVUC fund of P45 billion.

A list of requests and projects given by Andaya to the media last Tuesday showed that scores of lawmakers and DPWH regional directors and district engineers have asked the Road Board to release P5.3 billion for mostly asphalting projects.

In May this year, the House, under ousted speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, passed Bill 7436, entitled, “An Act abolishing the Road Board and providing for the distribution of the motor vehicle user’s charge collections, amending for the purpose Republic Act 8794.”

The measure was sent to the Senate on May 17. Four months later, on Sept. 12, the Senate adopted the bill without amendments upon learning that the House would recall its approval of it, which the larger chamber did on the same day.

Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo has said the President would sign any abolition bill that reaches his desk.

Sotto was reported on Tuesday to have sent a copy of the measure to Malacañang, urging Duterte to sign it.

“Let any interested citizen challenge it before the courts,” he said.

On Friday, Duterte said he was siding with the Senate on the Road Board abolition.

He added that he was not only for abolishing the agency but also the MVUC, which is in the form of a 100-percent increase in annual registration fees for motor vehicles.

Duterte stressed that MVUC collections have been a source of corruption for lawmakers and other public officials.

If the House does not send Bill 7436 to Duterte, it would take some time before a new measure could be passed and the Road Board could be abolished, unless the President signs the copy Sotto sent him on Tuesday.

Welcome move

Malacañang welcomed Andaya’s move to heed Duterte’s call to abolish the Board.

“We are pleased to know that the House of Representatives has listened to the voice of the people who have long been outraged by the corruption surrounding the use of the said tax,” said Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo yesterday.

He urged government officials to support the call of the President for a clean government, responsive to the needs of its constituents.

“Let the President’s call for a clean and responsive government to the needs of the governed be taken to heart by those who temporarily wield political power so that our country could commence to traverse the path of righteousness and progress so long denied them by those they have entrusted with authority,” Panelo said.

Duterte earlier said House leaders, including Andaya, were wrong in presuming that he wanted the Road Users Tax and the Road Board to continue.

The President said he stands by the Senate’s position to have the Road Board abolished. He also said that he stood by his earlier pronouncements, made when he assumed office in 2016, that he really wanted the Road Users Tax and the Road Board to be discontinued as it has become a source of corruption.

“Early on, I told them that I really don’t like it. But you know politics and the expediency of everything, it (Road Board) is still there until now. And I had a talk with president Arroyo and apparently there was a misunderstanding because all along I really wanted to abolish the road tax and Andaya says now that was…one of those who said that it should be maintained. No, they are wrong there,” he said partly in Filipino during the change of command ceremony of the Philippine Air Force at Villamor Air Base the other night.

He added that he wanted to “communicate my intentions, my plans, my worries, my headache in running the country. You know there’s a little bit of a ruckus there in Congress regarding the abolition or the continuance of the road user’s tax, board.”

“I believe that the Senate has decided the right thing and has stated that the road tax, board must be dismantled. Ever since I assumed office, I’ve always been wary about this office because it has been the milking cow of people who are corrupt in government,” the President also said.

He pointed out that he has questioned the existence of the Road Board, which he described as “nothing but a depository of money and for corruption.”

“I side with the Senate and if it comes to a constitutional controversy, the executive department will side with the Philippine Senate and its interpretation of the law that the process has been completed; that it has been sent to the Senate for approval and on time it was signed,” Duterte added.

He likewise said that in three years time he will step down from office and that he would just want to do the right thing for the nation.

“In three years’ time, I will step down. Do not entertain claims of me perpetuating in office or toying with the Constitution. I do not have that plan and I will not stay a minute longer. I am as…I am in a hurry as anybody else to leave this job. I also get tired,” Duterte added. – With Cecille Suerte Felipe, Edith Regalado