Palace: Unconstitutional House insertions among vetoed items

MANILA, Philippines — The P95.3 billion worth of appropriations in the P3.8-trillion budget for 2019 vetoed by President Rodrigo Duterte included the “unconstitutional” changes to the spending bill made by the House of Representatives, Malacañang said on Tuesday.

Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea said late on Monday that the vetoed appropriations were not found to be unconstitutional but were just not part of President Duterte’s programmed priorities.

But asked on Tuesday if the vetoed items included the postratification realignments by the House, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo replied: “Correct. It is.”

Violated the Constitution

Panelo said the rejected provisions were “the so-called insertions or riders” that were not part of the Department of Public Works and Highways’ program and therefore violated the Constitution.

“Those vetoed provisions are in violation of the Constitution or it is against certain statutes. That was also the statement made by the President,” he said.

“Remember the [2013] decision of the Supreme Court? The decision of the Supreme Court was that if they are unprogrammed, then it violates the Constitution,” he added.

The senators rejected the unprogrammed provisions introduced by the House after Congress ratified the budget bill on Feb. 8. For them, the postratification changes were pork.

The congressmen insisted they simply itemized lump sums in the budget, a process that they claimed was in accordance with the Constitution.

Asked on Tuesday if the Palace considered the vetoed appropriations pork, Panelo said: “They are in violation of the Constitution. Whether you call it pork or beef or meat or fish, those provisions are violative of the basic Charter.”

House-Senate standoff

Months of squabbling between the House and the Senate over the creation and elimination of pork delayed the transmission of the budget bill to Malacañang.

The delay forced the administration to revert to the 2018 budget and cut its 2019 growth target to 6-7 percent from 7-8 percent, reflecting the absence of a new spending program.

To break the standoff, Senate President Vicente Sotto III signed the ratified budget bill in late March and transmitted it to the Palace with a letter advising the President to veto unconstitutional provisions.

In signing the budget on Monday, Mr. Duterte told the House leadership in a veto message that “[a]ny provision introduced in this budget which does not relate to a particular appropriation or those which seek to amend the Constitution and existing laws have no place in the (General Appropriations Act) as these are considered ‘rider’ provisions and therefore must be subjected to direct veto.”

“Likewise, items of appropriation that are not consistent with the programmed priorities are hereby vetoed,” he said.

Just OK with GMA

Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shrugged off the House’s loss, telling reporters in San Carlos City, Negros Oriental province, that she, too, vetoed budget provisions when she was President.

“Every year, I partially vetoed the budget,” Arroyo said.

The budget was also reenacted in 2001, 2004 and 2007 under Arroyo.

But Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr., the House appropriations committee chair, was bitter, slamming the “celebratory mood” at the Senate on Tuesday.

Andaya said in a statement that he had not yet read the President’s veto message but wondered why the Senate was “claiming victory” over the deletion from the budget of billions of pesos worth of amendments by the House.

“Does this mean that the Senate pork remains intact? Could this be the reason for their celebratory mood?” he said.

“It’s not Good Friday in the Senate but Christmas,” he said.

Sotto dismissed Andaya’s talk of senatorial pork.

“We do not need to pay attention to brickbats. It’s the people’s victory. The illegal realignments cannot escape the President’s scrutiny,” Sotto said on Tuesday.

“[The President] and his Cabinet know what is advocacy and what is pork,” he added.

Sotto reiterated that the additional funds for the construction of health centers and the modernization of the military should not be seen as pork.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the pork buster who led the charge against the House realignments, praised the President for vetoing the pork in the budget.

“If there is one act of [the President] that is worthy of admiration, this veto message is on top of my list,” Lacson tweeted on Tuesday.

“With his guts, glory comes to the Filipino taxpayers,” he said.

Really pork-free budget?

But asked by the Inquirer if the approved budget was really free of pork as defined in the 2013 Supreme Court ruling, Lacson said, “That we have to see.”

“Nothing is perfect in this world. I hope we will get there sooner than later and consistently,” he said.

Party-list groups Bayan Muna and ACT Teachers said Mr. Duterte should have also vetoed the billions of pesos in “presidential pork” that the senators had tucked in the allotments for the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp., Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, and other government-owned and -controlled corporations.

Not everyone in the House is angry over the loss of pork.

‘Slap in the face’

Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Raymund Villafuerte, a vice chair on Andaya’s committee who had sided with the senators in the controversy, called the veto “a slap in the face of the House leadership.”

“This presidential veto is a slap in the face of House leaders, particularly Andaya and (Majority Leader Fredenil) Castro, who both insisted no manipulations had taken place and that they had simply itemized lump-sum portions of the budget, even to the point of mocking their critics for supposedly making much ado about nothing,” he said.

“Well, the veto proved who among us were telling the truth,” said Villafuerte, who earlier accused Andaya and Castro of diverting public works and health funds from some districts to those of their allies. —WITH REPORTS FROM MARLON RAMOS, DJ YAP, MELVIN GASCON, CARLA P. GOMEZ, JEROME ANING AND WIRES