MANILA, Philippines — Opposition senators would push for the realignment of the P19-billion proposed budget for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-Elcac) that was laid out in lump-sum items — a practice already declared illegal by the Supreme Court, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said on Monday.
In an online interview with reporters, Drilon said the money should instead be used to augment funding for vaccination and housing programs, adding that the task force’s anti-insurgency projects could be deferred until 2022.
“That is what the anti-insurgency fund looks like today—it’s a lump-sum appropriation of P19 billion to so-called 822 barangays. We don’t have opportunity to examine whether these 822 barangays will need funds, will need farm-to-market roads, housing units, school buildings, etc, because this is precisely what the [Supreme Court] ruled as unconstitutional,” he added.
Drilon was reacting to Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Sen. Sonny Angara, Senate finance committee chair, who earlier said they were against touching the P19-billion allocation for NTF-Elcac.
The Senate is about to deliberate on the national government’s P4.5-trillion proposed 2021 budget, which is seen as the country’s main stimulus measure to revive an economy crippled by a monthslong lockdown due to COVID-19.
The NTF-Elcac funding has drawn the attention of many lawmakers, as it is bigger than the proposed budget of several major departments and agencies.
According to Drilon, the projects to be funded under the task force’s budget are considered post-enactment interventions, which supposedly deprives Congress of its “power of the purse.”
Correct priorities
“This prohibition should apply to both the executive and the legislative branch. We cannot have a lump sum and leave to the NTF-Elcac the authority to point to the projects and barangays where these funds will be devoted,” he said.
Drilon, however, clarified that the Senate opposition was not averse to the government’s anti-insurgency campaign but only wanted to “set the correct priorities.”
“The 2021 budget cannot be a ‘business-as-usual’ budget. This is the first time that our country is confronted with a very heavy responsibility in terms of the pandemic and the typhoons, the critical housing needs,” he said.
He observed that the 2021 budget showed the government’s “skewed” priorities.
“It still gives the highest priority to the security sector, which to me, this can be deferred for 2022. We need for 2021 heavy government spending to restore public confidence in our ability to address the pandemic,” Drilon said.
According to him, the government would need more funds for the vaccination against COVID-19 of about 70 percent of 105 million Filipinos.
“At P500 per person, that [would] require an allocation of P30 billion. That should roughly require anywhere from P32 to P35 billion to inoculate 60 to 70 million of Filipinos,” he said.