Lacson to lawmakers: Deleting ‘pork’ will be a ‘genuine gesture of good faith’

MANILA, Philippines —Senator Panfilo Lacson has asked the House of Representatives to delete or reduce the huge allocations for the districts of House Speaker Gloria Arroyo and House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya, Jr. if the chamber’s leadership believe this was a case of a “misplaced gesture of generosity.”

Lacson was reacting to Andaya’s claim that the House Appropriations Committee, not Arroyo was responsible for the P4.3 billion alleged “pork barrel” in the proposed 2019 national budget.

He said that the committee may have displayed “misplaced generosity” when it granted the requests of public works regional directors for funding for flood control projects in Pampanga and road projects in Camarines Sur.

If that’s the case, Lacson said deleting those “humongous allocations” would be a “genuine gesture of good faith.”

“Since [House] Majority Leader Andaya claims that the huge earmarks for his and [Arroyo’s] district are a case of ‘misplaced gesture of generosity,’ maybe they can display a ‘genuine gesture of good faith’ by deleting or reducing those humongous allocations,” Lacson said in a Twitter post early Thursday.

Lacson earlier disclosed that a male lawmaker from Camarines Sur and the second district of Pampanga represented by Arroyo cornered the lion’s share of congressional insertions under the General Appropriations Bill for next year.

READ: Lacson: P2.4-B pork for Arroyo’s district

Arroyo’s district is getting P2.4 billion worth of projects while the Camarines Sur lawmaker ended up with P1.9 billion worth of projects, Lacson said.

Lacson has been waging a campaign to rid the annual spending bill of what he describes as “pork,” or allocations for pet projects of lawmakers.  /muf