Former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares (File photo by RYAN LEAGOGO / INQUIRER.net)
MANILA, Philippines — The proposed Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is not yet acceptable as no major changes have been made to the bill, former Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares said in a statement on Monday.
The statement contradicts the statement of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Felipe Medalla, who said last Friday that the MIF was “more acceptable” since it would no longer use the country’s foreign reserves.
“How is this acceptable? Has anything been changed? Where is the copy of the final bill? There’s no transparency because of shortcuts and abuse of processes, that’s why there is also no accountability to Filipinos,” Colmenares said in Filipino.
“It has to be returned to the House of Representatives so it could be amended, as this Maharlika Investment Fund bill was rushed on the basis of Malacanang’s certification of urgency,” he added.
A quick search at the House website, however, shows a third reading copy of House Bill (HB) No. 6608, the final version of the MIF proposal that was approved at the plenary on its third and final reading on Dec. 15, 2022.
The copy on the House website contains the amendments made at the plenary before it was passed on second reading. It includes issues raised by Alliance of Concerned Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro, such as the direct distribution of 25 percent of MIF funds as social aid to poor families.
Still, Colmenares insists that more time should be spent studying the bill as it was certified as urgent despite the absence of an emergency
President Ferdinand Marcos certified the bill as urgent after the House approved it on its second and third reading on the same day, Dec. 15. Without the certification, three more session days would have been allotted to approve the bill — meaning the House would have acted on it on January as its session took a recess on Dec. 16.
“First, the bill was certified as urgent by the president despite there being no emergency or calamity. The Constitution provides that presidential certification of urgency must only be exercised in a clearly exceptional situation of public emergency or calamity that is of such nature that the ‘immediate enactment’ of a law is required to address said emergency or calamity,” Colmenares said.
“This rushed voting deprived members of the House the opportunity to scrutinize the bill and ensure that it contains all the provisions amended and agreed upon in the Second Rearing. The Members were deprived of the opportunity to perform the constitutionally required process in the approval of a measure for no appropriate and apparent reason except that the bill was merely certified urgent by the president,” he added.
Key House members, including Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez., backed HB No. 6398 — the original version of HB No. 6608, proposing a sovereign wealth fund that the government can tap for investments both here and abroad.
It initially drew controversy for specifying as sources of startup funding P125 billion from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and P50 billion from the Social Security System (SSS).
That stoked fears that pensioners might lose their benefits if the MIF investments should fail.
Eventually, the GSIS and SSS funds — including the funds from the national budget — were removed from the MIF’s fund sources.
The final version of the bill, which was approved by the House before the session break last December, also explicitly stated that the MIF would never source funds from both GSIS and SSS.