Drilon plays Scrooge: No senators’ bonuses

By: TJ Burgonio - 11 years ago

INQUIRER FILE PHOTOS

Senate President Franklin Drilon played Scrooge to his colleagues, and rightly so, this Christmas.

Drilon didn’t give a Christmas bonus to his 23 colleagues this season, avoiding a repeat of last December’s controversy involving bonuses that became the casus belli of the yearlong conflict between Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Miriam Defensor-Santiago. (See “What Went Before.”)

But most senators, reeling from the pork barrel scandal that has been roiling Congress and the bureaucracy since July, seem happy about it.

“The good news to the public is that if four senators didn’t get a Christmas bonus last year, this year, nobody got a Christmas bonus [by check],” Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano told reporters on Friday.

Cayetano, however, said he had yet to check if he got additional funds in capital outlay or maintenance and other operating expenses, items in the senators’ budget where the bonus was credited in past Christmases.

Confirmed

Neophyte Sen. Grace Poe confirmed the information in a text message: “No Christmas bonus from SP (Senate President) and no 13th-month pay either.”

So did Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who texted that he didn’t get a bonus in any form from Drilon. “None,” he said.

But Poe and Trillanes believed Santa’s absence this year would serve the Senate better, as the public demands honest lawmaking in the wake of the P10-billion pork barrel scandal.

“The important role of each senator now is to do his or her share to restore the people’s trust in the institution,” Poe said.

Instead of a bonus, Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara said he received the book “I am Malala,” a memoir by a teenage girl who was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan for championing education for women, and a food basket from Drilon.

Plunder charges

Three senators—Jinggoy Estrada, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Enrile—are facing plunder charges in connection with the pork barrel scam in the Office of the Ombudsman, along with the alleged brains behind the racket, businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, and 34 others.

The rest of the senators have also been implicated in the scandal either by authorizing the use of their pork barrel to finance phantom projects proposed by bogus nongovernment organizations set up by Napoles or by their association with the businesswoman.

The Inquirer tried but failed to reach Drilon for comment on Saturday.

A day after the Senate adjourned for the holidays on Wednesday, Drilon acknowledged that the past few months had been “very challenging” and “fulfilling.”

Pork deleted

“During my first five months as Senate President, the challenge was how to restore the people’s confidence in the Senate as an institution,” he told reporters.

After the scandal broke in July, the senators waived their pork barrel for the rest of the year.

Fifteen of them, including five of the junior senators, also had their P200-million Priority Development Assistance Fund allocation scrapped and deleted from the 2014 national budget.

“I think we have succeeded [in restoring people’s confidence], maybe not fully, because it is a work in progress to completely bring back the confidence of our people,” Drilon said.