Pimentel questions need to certify budget bill as urgent

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III  (Screen grab/Senate PRIB)

MANILA, Philippines — Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III questioned on Wednesday the need to certify the 2023 national budget bill as urgent.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. earlier certified as urgent House Bill No. 4488 or the 2023 General Appropriations Bill (GAB). The national budget for next year is P5.268 trillion.

Pimentel said in the Senate plenary that Congress yearly enacts the GAB with a timeframe.

“I do not see the justification why a budget measure should be certified as urgent.

Facade of the Senate of the Philippines building. FILE PHOTO

“Parati naman po natin ‘tong ginagawa (We always do this). There is a timetable, and there is a predictable period or month in the year that we have to take this up,” he said.

Senator Sonny Angara, chairperson of the Senate committee on finance, attributed the president’s certification to practicality.

“I think the reason is practicality, really. It’s to dispense with the required time between [the] second and third reading under the Constitution,” Angara explained.

Pimentel, however, asserted that the period between the second and third reading is “a very critical period of time.”

The minority leader also cited the Constitution’s Section 26, Paragraph 2 of Article 6, which states that: No bill passed by either house shall become a law unless it has passed three readings on separate days and printed copies thereof in its final form have been distributed to its members three days before its passage, except when the president certifies to the necessity of immediate enactment to meet a public calamity or emergency.

Pimentel said he does not know “what public calamity or emergency the president cited in his certification.”

“I think practicality is the biggest argument on that and the emergency, although it is stretching the definition of emergency somewhat, the emergency is not passing the budget on time,” said Angara.

Pimentel stood his ground and said: “My position is that practicality is not mentioned in the Constitution as one of the grounds where you can certify a measure as urgent.”

The House of Representatives has already approved the 2023 budget on final reading.

gsg/abc