A current governor, who was one of the lawmakers who received an endowment from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), is complaining why Quezon 3rd District Rep. Danilo “Danny” Suarez cornered the bulk of the money intended for their choice hospitals.
Cotabato Gov. Emmylou “Lala” Taliño-Mendoza confirmed to the Inquirer that she was one of the eight members of the House of Representatives given PCSO funds during the last three-and-half years of the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
PCSO documents showed that Mendoza was then a representative in 2008 when she was given by the board of the charity agency P200,000 for Philippine General Hospital, P500,000 for Davao Medical Center and P500,000 for Cotabato Regional and Medical Center.
But Mendoza said she only received P200,000 and not P1.2 million as reported by the PCSO for her constituents’ hospital and medical expenses.
“It is clear where my funds went and who benefited from them. But I only got P200,000 and I don’t know where the rest went. But what I find frustrating is that somebody else got millions more than everybody else,” she said in a phone interview.
Suarez received P68 million for 16 hospitals, all of them granted in the last three months of the Arroyo administration.
Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay, an ally of Arroyo who is now a Pampanga representative, said that pork barrel funds were not enough to meet the medical needs of constituents, prompting them to augment their funds with endowment from the PCSO.
Magsaysay said the PCSO should change the way it was giving out its endowments to lawmakers. “It should be on per patient basis and not lump sum. I always used a per patient basis when I help my constituents facilitate their request for assistance,” she said in a text message.
She said the PCSO should continue to give endowment funds to lawmakers especially because of the demand for chemotherapy of cancer patients and dialysis of kidney patients.
Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenaress said he was not surprised that Arroyo would favor her allies with PCSO money as she had withheld the pork barrel of her critics, especially during the series of failed impeachment cases filed against her.
“The PCSO should not have given such large amount of funds as this not only smacks of favoritism but the obscenely large amounts also do not speak well of legislative independence,” Colmenares said.
He said it was about time that the use of priority development assistance funds or public funds as largesse to influence Congress be stopped.
“The millions of pesos look more obscene when I remember the death of a constituent for the failure of the PCSO to help her despite my plea for financial assistance in 2009. This discrimination was one of the reasons for my privilege speech on PCSO anomalies last May and I hope this investigation will put a stop to this discrimination and favoritism,” he said.