House may no longer summon Benjamin Diokno

MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives may no longer summon Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno to its inquiry into the allegedly anomalous budget practices of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) under him.

Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. said yesterday he and Minority Leader Danilo Suarez “are still contemplating on our next move” after the DBM secretary failed to attend their hearing on Friday despite a subpoena issued to him.

“For me, there is no need for Secretary Diokno to appear as testimonies of witnesses have already shown that he is inutile and a coward. He will just find all available excuses in the book to evade direct questioning from committee members,” he said.

Andaya chairs the committee on appropriations, which is conducting the inquiry jointly with the committee on public accounts headed by Suarez.

Based on documents and testimonies given to the two panels, Andaya said Diokno’s “fingerprints are all over with regard to the P75-billion insertion” he claimed the budget secretary inserted in the 2019 funding for the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

“This is a carefully-planned operation, from start to finish.

We took notice of Secretary Diokno’s Circular Letter No. 2018-8 dated July 30, 2018, which prescribes the ‘Guidelines on the Conduct of Early Procurement for the Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 National Expenditure Program (NEP)’.”

The NEP is President Duterte’s budget proposal for this year. It amounted to P3.757 trillion.

Andaya said under the guidelines, Diokno instructed all heads of executive, legislative and judicial branches of government to “undertake early procurement activities from October to December 2018, upon the submission of the 2019 NEP to Congress.”

These activities included pre-procurement conference, post-qualification of bids and the bids and awards committees’ recommendation to award the contracts to the winning bidders, he said.

“This means that while Congress was scrutinizing the proposed budget for this year, Secretary Diokno already authorized the bidding of projects funded under such budget,” he said.

He pointed out that DPWH regional and district offices bid out the P75-billion infrastructure projects “inserted in the NEP in the wee hours of July 12, 2018 and are ready to award the contracts to the winning bidders once the President signs the budget.”

“However, we foiled Secretary Diokno’s evil scheme as a result of the House hearings on the issue. We will scrutinize these projects that have already been bid out with the DBM secretary’s help,” Andaya added.

He said he received information that many winning bidders have already advanced the commissions of unnamed lawmakers and officials behind the projects.

The House and the Senate have realigned the bulk of the P75-billion and most of the original projects supposed to be funded have already been scrapped.

Andaya said instead of summoning Diokno anew, the investigating panels would again subpoena top DBM and DPWH officials “to pin down the real masterminds behind the P75-billion insertion in the preparation of the 2019 NEP.”

He said they would zero in on DBM Undersecretary Amenah Pangandaman, Diokno’s chief of staff, and Engr. Glenn Degal, a DPWH programmer.    

He said sworn testimonies given at Friday’s hearing “pointed to the two as the conspirators behind the cloak-and-dagger operations that led to the insertion of a list of DPWH infrastructure projects in the NEP without the knowledge of DPWH Sec. Mark Villar.”

Villar had claimed that he knew about the P75-billion addition to his department’s budget when the DBM printed Duterte’s budget proposal and distributed it among agencies.

Diokno and presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo disputed such claim, saying Villar attended the Cabinet meeting that approved the proposed budget before the DBM printed it and submitted it to Congress.

At the same time, Andaya denied that the second district of Pampanga, which Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo represents, has been allocated P606 million for farm-to-market roads.

“There is no basis to make such a conclusion. What we signed (in the bicameral conference) are the total increases per department. Definitely, the Speaker’s district is not receiving that amount for farm-to-market roads. Nowhere in the bicam report, which we furnished media, does it appear that way,” he said.