House Majority Floor Leader Rolando Andaya, Jr. Noy Morcoso/Inquirer.net
Updated @ 12:43 a.m., Dec. 23, 2018
MANILA, Philippines — The House of Representatives’ majority bloc waved the white flag on Saturday in its battle to save the corruption-ridden Road Board from abolition.
House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. said “the President has spoken” and the chamber would heed his decision.
“We heard his message to the House. We will act based on his guidance,” Andaya said in a statement.
“As an institution, we will heed the President’s call,” he said.
Andaya issued the statement a day after the President said he was siding with the Senate in its stand to scrap the Road Board, a government agency accused of mismanaging billions in revenue from the road user’s tax.
Categorical
In a speech on Friday during the change of command at the Philippine Air Force, the President made his most categorical statement yet on the Road Board’s abolition.
“Let’s just go ahead and abolish it,” the President said in his speech at Villamor Air Base.
“I have always been wary about this office because it has been the milking cow of people who are in government,” he said.
The President’s position was previously aired only by his spokesperson, Salvador Panelo, which Andaya publicly tried to discredit, saying he personally knew the President’s position to be the opposite.
Andaya claimed that he and Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had met with the President who had agreed to preserve the Road Board.
READ: Duterte says ‘it’s time to abolish’ Road Board
Moving on
But after Friday’s rebuke by Mr. Duterte, Andaya said it was time for the House majority to move on and “concentrate on the scrutiny of the 2018 budget, parked pork and P75 billion” in insertions allegedly made by the Department of Budget and Management.
Andaya said action on the Road Board, though, should “be real abolition with no residues.”
The House, Andaya said, supported proposals to make the revenue generated by the motor vehicle user’s charge, or road tax, part of the general fund.
The road user’s tax, he said, should be “not an off-budget item that will be spent by one person in an untransparent way.”
Currently, the road tax “is segregated and treated as a nonnational budget expenditure,” which opens it to corruption, Andaya said.
Arroyo’s withdrawal
The Senate and House had earlier approved the Road Board’s abolition but the House leadership under Arroyo withdrew the chamber’s support for the measure, stalling its transmittal to the President for signing into law.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III had said he would transmit the bill to Malacañang even without Arroyo’s signature.
But after learning of Andaya’s remarks, Sotto said the Senate was now willing to wait for Arroyo’s signature on the bill before its transmission to Malacañang.
“That’s good news,” Sotto said of Andaya’s gesture of surrender. “It will avoid any further conflict.”
Next move
Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said the two chambers could now recall the enrolled copies of the bill abolishing the Road Board, convene a bicameral conference committee and improve the measure.
Zubiri agreed with Andaya’s position to make the road user’s tax part of the general fund.
But the senator said it should be used for free college education, antipoverty projects and the Duterte administration’s ambitious “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure program.
But Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said there was no need to go through the legislative mill to abolish the Road Board.
“No law is needed to abolish the Road Board,” Drilon said. “It is already dead,” he added.
The agency, Drilon said, had been rendered “inutile” even if courts decided that it could not be abolished without Arroyo’s signature on the bill abolishing the board.
Executive action
Drilon said the President could issue a directive to deprive the Road Board of funds or simply for the board not to exercise the role delegated to it by Congress during Arroyo’s time as President.
“If the Road Board will not exercise that delegated authority, Congress cannot do anything,” Drilon said.
“That is how the system works,” he added.
Drilon sponsored a resolution passed by the Senate urging the Office of the President to stop releasing revenue generated by the road user’s tax for projects identified by the Road Board.
Another way to abolish the Road Board, Drilon said, was for the Senate to give it a zero budget.
The Road Board was mandated by law that created it to identify projects for funding by the road user’s tax but limited to road maintenance, improvement of drainage, traffic lights, road safety and air pollution control.
But Drilon said over the years, the Commission on Audit had flagged the use of funds by the Road Board for projects not listed by the law, indicating misuse. — With reports from Jerome Aning and Maila Ager
/je /pdi