House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. on Tuesday said Department of Budget and Management (DBM) “insiders” had come forward with information about irregularities in the preparation of the budget.
The Camarines Sur representative reiterated that the DBM awarded infrastructure projects to certain contractors long before the House of Representatives and the Senate could approve the annual spending program.
“These DBM insiders intimated to me that under the leadership of Secretary (Benjamin) Diokno, billions (of pesos worth) of projects in Sorsogon for 2018 started to be bid out as early as November 2017,” Andaya said in a statement.
“The DBM, under Secretary Diokno, has taken Congress for a ride in the past two years. It’s only now that we have learned of this [irregularity]. The committee hearings and plenary debates in Congress had been put to waste,” he added.
Andaya did not name the employees, but said they had given him details of the “questionable budget allocations in the Bicol region.”
“I don’t understand why Secretary Diokno was rushing to download funds for Sorsogon. While the Congress has yet to approve the budget, the bidding for the P10 billion worth of projects for Sorsogon had already started,” Andaya said.
During Question Hour in the House last week, Minority Leader Danilo Suarez grilled Diokno about his supposed role in the allotment of billions of pesos for projects in Sorsogon, where the parents of the budget secretary’s son-in-law are elected officials.
A defiant Diokno quickly deflected the allegations of impropriety, claiming he did not even know that his in-laws, Sorsogon Vice Gov. Ester Hamor and Casiguran Mayor Edwin Hamor, were running in the 2019 midterm elections.
“Now that more whistleblowers are coming out in the open, there is an urgent need for Congress to exercise its oversight function over the disbursement of government funds,” Andaya said.
Questionable allocations
“Definitely, we will [take to] task the DBM for these questionable allocations. We will not stop in our investigation, whether Cabinet members appear or not in our hearings,” he said.
Diokno said in a television interview on Monday that he had been told not to appear in the House investigation, but he did not identify the source of the directive.
On Tuesday, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo told reporters that the instruction most likely came from President Rodrigo Duterte.
“There’s only one who [can tell Diokno not to] go there, it’s the President. So presumably it’s coming from the President,” Panelo said.
Asked why, he cited the “rude treatment” that Diokno got during Question Hour in the House last week.
“Another reason is that if you will be submitting questions to the resource person and you’ll not be asking them, so what’s the use of going there?” he said.
“But as a courtesy, we will always respond to any invitation. All we ask is, please give us the courtesy as we give the same to you,” he added.
Panelo defended Diokno anew against the House call to fire the budget secretary, saying it came after Sen. Panfilo Lacson disclosed alleged insertions in the P3.8-trillion proposed budget for 2019.
“And because members of [the House] or two of them were [in] the hot seat, according to (Diokno), most likely they tried to put him [in the] hot seat instead of them. So in a way it’s diverting the issue from them,” Panelo said.
He was referring to Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whose district in Pampanga, according to Lacson, received P2.4 billion in pork projects in the proposed budget for 2019, and Andaya, whose district in Camarines Sur, the senator said, got P1.9 billion.
When Malacañang demanded an explanation, Andaya questioned the award of 39 infrastructure contracts to a “favored contractor,” CT Leoncio Construction and Trading, even before Congress could enact the 2019 budget and the insertion of P75 billion in the spending bill without the knowledge of President Duterte.
President aware
Diokno said the President was aware of the adjustments made to the spending plan, as these had been discussed at Cabinet meetings.
In his television interview on Monday, Diokno said Public Works Secretary Mark Villar knew that P75 billion had been added to his agency’s proposed budget but did not question it.
On Tuesday, Villar admitted that he was aware of the addition to the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), but declined to comment.
“I don’t want to comment on something I don’t know. Maybe they have some agreements about the budget, but the budget is ongoing. It’s all part of the budgetary process. There is nothing that is not part of the budgetary [process],” Villar said.
They want his scalp
The House, however, won’t stop going after Diokno’s scalp.
Andaya said the House investigation would focus on the allotments for flood control projects that he claimed failed to prevent flooding even after the spending for such projects hit P133 billion this year.
“It’s clear that the DBM is not concerned about solving the flooding or fund projects of President Duterte’s ‘Build, Build, Build’ program,” he said. “They are more interested in funds which would benefit them.”
In the draft spending bill for 2019, he said, the DPWH had earmarked P114.4 billion for flood mitigation projects, or almost 25 percent of its P544.5 billion allocation.
He said the figure was almost the same as the DPWH’s P122.9-billion budget for its “network development program” and double the P59 billion for its maintenance funds.
The controversy has delayed the enactment of the 2019 budget. The government will operate on the 2018 budget up to January. —With reports from Christine O. Avendaño and Jovic Yee