Senate President Franklin Drilon. FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines — The Senate on Tuesday began deliberations on the proposed P2.268 trillion national budget amid corruption allegations in the use of legislators’ Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) known as “pork barrel”.
No less than Senate President Franklin Drilon recognized that for the first time, the Senate opened its budget deliberations “under an environment of mistrust, distrust, and even anger of the people on the legislature and in the government in general because of allegations of corruption and abuses in the PDAF.”
“We can’t ignore that. That’s where we are today. Indeed, we should hold ourselves accountable to our people and we should listen to what our people are saying,” Drilon said in his opening statement immediately after the committee on finance headed by Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero began its proceeding a little after 9 a.m.
“Having said that, we will be remised with our duty if we do not exercise our constitutional duty to scrutinize the budget. We should continue to exercise this mandate to scrutinize the budget, the expenditure program including identifying and assessing the beneficiaries and the impact of the programs in the budget,” he said.
“The last thing we’d want to see is to surrender all these powers to the executive and leave to the discretion of the executive how public taxes should be spent without Congress exercising its constitutional duty to review and approve it. But in the exercise of this constitutional duty, we will make our people part of the process and indeed we should take into serious account what our people are saying,” Drilon added.
Majority of senators, including Drilon and Escudero, have joined calls for the abolition of PDAF after the Commission on Audit disclosed its latest report, showing that some legislators have exceeded their pork barrel allocation from 2007 to 2009, and millions of these funds allegedly went to questionable non-government organizations.
After Drilon’ statement, the committee then proceeded to hear the briefing by the Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC).
Among those invited were Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, Finace Secretary Cesar Pursima, Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Jacitno-Henares, and Customs Commissioner Rozzano Rufino Biazon.
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