House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II: Like beggars INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—With the congressional pork barrel ostensibly ceasing to be a feature of future national budgets, lawmakers would have to lobby the various executive departments to obtain programs or projects for their constituents and districts, according to House Majority Leader Neptali Gonzales II.
Many constituents still expect their representatives to provide for their various needs, which means the legislators would have to ask the departments to help provide for their needs, Gonzales said.
Gonzales said lawmakers do not necessarily have to go to Malacañang for these projects.
They could always speak with the various officials of the different departments during the preparation of the 2015 budget, he suggested.
For instance, a lawmaker could ask the Department of Health to include funding for the acquisition of a CT scan machine for a regional hospital in the 2015 budget proposal to be submitted to Congress, he said.
“While it’s said that the congressmen’s task is to legislate, I’m sure they will also go [to the departments], they will be like beggars that would go to the departments to see how to address the problems in their districts,” Gonzales told a press briefing.
He argued that this would not go against the Supreme Court ruling invalidating the pork barrel allotment, officially called the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), because what the ruling prohibited was the lawmakers’ identifying projects to be funded by the lump sum PDAF after the budget has been enacted.
Gonzales said constituents would still expect lawmakers to help them in other ways.
“Whether you like it or not, the reality is people also look at the executive function of a congressman. It’s true the function of the congressman is to debate and make laws, but at the end of the day, constituents will still look for projects from you,” he said.
Speaker Feliciano Belmonte earlier suggested that lawmakers could also refer their constituents to the various departments to ask for assistance for their needs, although their referrals and recommendations would no longer be binding.
Gonzales said the poorer provinces would feel the loss of the PDAF the most, he added.