Escudero cites interchamber courtesy

Sen. Francis Escudero: interchamber courtesy. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

Legislative courtesy dictates that senators and representatives refrain from commenting on the action of each chamber, Sen. Francis Escudero said on Sunday.

Invoking “interchamber” courtesy, Escudero said members of the House of Representatives should respect Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s decision to realign his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allocation to three local government units (LGUs) in the 2014 budget.

The LGUs included Manila where Estrada’s father, former President Joseph Estrada, is the mayor.

“Owing to interchamber courtesy, I will not comment nor dictate on what they did and what they did not do because I respect the decision of their chamber. I wish they did the same to the Senate,” Escudero said over radio dzBB, referring to the congressmen who grumbled about the realignment by several senators of their PDAF.

Escudero said this was part of the long tradition of Congress. Besides, he added, all the decisions by the senators on the disposition of their PDAF allocations had been made public.

Some House representatives complained about Estrada’s move to realign what was supposed to be his PDAF allocation to Manila, Caloocan City and Lal-lo town in Cagayan.

The lawmakers said they had been barred by House leaders from realigning their allocations to LGUs in response to President Aquino’s announcement of the abolition of the PDAF.

The PDAF allocations of close to 300 lawmakers were realigned to five departments in the 2014 budget. In the Senate, 15 senators had their allocations totaling P3 billion deleted from the 2014 budget, while nine others had theirs realigned to the calamity fund, universities, hospitals and public works projects.

Of the nine, only Estrada requested that his PDAF be realigned to “Allocation to Local Government Units.” His P200 million was broken down into P100 million for Manila, and P50 million each for Caloocan and Lal-lo.

Aquino subjected the request to “conditional implementation,” saying this may not be consistent with the objectives of the Local Government Support Fund. He directed budget officials to issue guidelines for LGUs to equally avail themselves of it.

Estrada and Escudero, chair of the finance committee, said the former’s move did not violate the landmark decision of the Supreme Court that ruled unconstitutional the 2013 PDAF, as well as provisions of the law that allowed lawmakers to intervene in the postenactment of the budget.

The Supreme Court ruling came in the wake of public uproar over allegations that lawmakers pocketed huge amounts of their pork barrel allocations.

Several lawmakers, including three senators (Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile and Ramon Revilla Jr.), have been charged with plunder in the Office of the Ombudsman in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam that was allegedly masterminded by businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.