What Went Before: Senate bonuses

By: 11 years ago

Senate Minority Leader Juan Ponce Enrile. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

On January 9, the Inquirer reported that Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile gave 22 senators nearly P30 million in “cash gifts” last Christmas. Eighteen of the senators received P1.6 million each, billed as “additional maintenance and other operating expenses” (MOOE). Four senators with whom Enrile did not see eye to eye on matters both professional and personal got only P250,000 each.

Aside from the senators, all employees of the Senate, including the drivers and security personnel, received bigger bonuses last Christmas, amounting to up to P120,000 each. Some of them said they got only P55,000 to P80,000 in previous years.

The cash gifts reportedly came from funds allotted for the Senate post vacated by President Benigno Aquino III in 2010 and the Senate’s remaining savings.

Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada and Sen. Panfilo Lacson were the first to confirm publicly that they received the additional MOOE from the Office of the Senate President. Both said Enrile had the authority to realign unspent funds and convert these to the MOOE.

In response to the Inquirer report, Enrile said what he gave to his colleagues was not a bribe. He also questioned why the additional MOOE suddenly became an issue when he had been giving it to the senators since he became Senate President in 2008.

Enrile invoked the exercise of his sole discretion in his refusal to give P1.6 million to the four senators—Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, his sister Sen. Pia Cayetano and Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Antonio Trillanes IV.

Santiago disclosed that Enrile had returned her and Sen. Pia Cayetano’s Christmas gifts because of their sponsorship of the reproductive health bill that the Senate chief opposed, so she ordered her staff on Jan. 4 to return the P250,000 that the Office of the Senate President’s staff described as “JPE’s (Enrile’s initials) personal cash gift.”

“He returned my biscuits, so I returned his cash,” Santiago explained, referring to the baked goodies from Panaderia de Molo of Iloilo province that she gave to Enrile for Christmas.

On Jan. 21, Enrile offered to resign as Senate President but 11 senators—Estrada, Lacson, Majority Leader Tito Sotto, Assistant Majority Leader Gregorio Honasan, Franklin Drilon, Francis Escudero, Teofisto Guingona III, Lito Lapid, Loren Legarda, Ralph Recto and Ramon Revilla Jr.—rejected his motion to declare his post vacant.

On Jan. 30, the Inquirer reported that the Senate funding for oversight committees with MOOE, the unused amounts of which the Commission on Audit (COA) cannot examine, more than doubled to about P450 million since President Aquino took office three years ago.

Based on data culled from the Department of Budget and Management website, Senate funds for the MOOE surged to P442.415 million in 2012 and to P428 million this year from only P212.398 million in 2010 and P209.898 million in 2011.

The funds are in addition to the amounts that the Senate set aside for its 39 regular committees. The number of oversight committees in the Senate also swelled from 19 in 2010 to 32 in 2012 and 34 in 2013.

On Feb. 1, Enrile proposed a review of the budgets of the Senate oversight committees with multimillion-peso allocations and the abolition of those that had become irrelevant.

On June 5, Enrile resigned as Senate President, saying the hate campaign against him involving the additional MOOE budget had eroded public trust in the Senate and affected the senatorial bid of his son, former Rep. Jack Enrile. The younger Enrile lost the race for the Senate seat in May’s midterm elections.

Estrada took over Enrile’s post and served as acting Senate President. On July 22, as the 16th Congress opened, Drilon was elected Senate President. Compiled by Marielle Medina, Inquirer Research

Source: Inquirer Archives