Commissions from contractors already paid to some lawmakers?

MANILA, Philippines — Some congressmen and senators have already received their commissions from contractors involved in government projects for this year, Sen. Panfilo Lacson said yesterday, explaining what could have made the lawmakers insist on keeping their pork barrel insertions in the 2019 budget.

Speaking at the Kapihan sa Senado forum, Lacson said lawmakers would usually receive advance commissions once their projects get included in the national expenditure program (NEP) or even if the national budget is not yet approved.

He said reporters should inquire with contractors about the practice, specifically how lawmakers and contractors arrive at such arrangements.

Lacson also noted that most of the projects in many districts were only covered courts, waiting sheds and the like.

“If we’re looking for development, Build-Build-Build, then what development can waiting shed, covered court give us? That’s what I’ve been saying – we can’t shrug off parochial concerns,” he said. “But those kind of items – they don’t contribute to the overall development of the country and even to the development of the LGUs.

“I can only venture a guess their contractors are not capable of doing anything else,” he said.

The P3.757-trillion 2019 national budget has been submitted to the Office of the President for signature after the end of the impasse between senators and congressmen over the appropriations program.

Lacson said the economic managers will still have to check details of the national budget, including the bicameral conference report ratified by both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

If President Duterte does not veto the questionable P75-billion insertions in the national spending program, Lacson said the matter can be elevated to the Supreme Court (SC) for interpretation.

“Again it is only the SC that can interpret if something like that is unconstitutional. It’s our opinion as a body, as a Senate,” he said. “Whether or not the President will agree with us is another matter,” he pointed out.

“Now if, for example, he approves it en toto without any veto message, it is only the SC that can interpret if it’s unconstitutional or not – not the Senate, not the House, not the executive, but the SC,” he maintained.

With the budget program still pending, economic managers have been forced to “revise” their projected growth targets for this year, according to Rep. LRay Villafuerte of Camarines Sur.

“The country’s economic team had to revise its growth target to six percent to seven percent from the original seven percent to eight percent GDP for 2019,” he said.

The delays in the enactment of the budget have also forced the administration to “curtail spending P45 billion on infrastructure and social services in the year’s first quarter because the government was forced to operate on the 2018 reenacted budget.”

“State economic managers were correct in pointing out that the window to frontload infrastructure projects under the Build, Build, Build program has become narrower with each day that the government continues to run on a reenacted budget,” Villafuerte said.

Meanwhile, party-list group Bayan Muna yesterday voiced support for the call of Senate President Vicente Sotto III for President Duterte to scrap “illegal and unconstitutional realignments” made in the proposed budget by House members.

“I dare the President to veto pork barrel allocations in the 2019 budget, starting with the P95 billion in realigned funds of the Department of Public Works and Highways the Senate president claims was unconstitutional,” Bayan Muna chairman Neri Colmenares said.

He said if Duterte rejects the realignments, Congress could pass a supplemental budget that would “itemize, in an open and transparent manner, the projects and programs to be funded.”

“The list should be open to public scrutiny and subject to congressional debate, unlike the secret horse trading between select congressmen and senators that happened in the recent bicameral conference committee (bicam) negotiations on the budget,” he said.    With Delon Porcalla, Jess Diaz