Groups urge Congress to override SSS pension hike veto on last day

MANILA, Philippines — It may be shooting at the moon, but a multisectoral coalition is still holding out hopes that Congress, before it adjourns this week, would defend the Social Security System (SSS) monthly pension hike.

Calling on Congress to override the President’s veto on the bill for a P2,000 across-the-board pension increase is one of the “action points” of the newly-launched “Buhay na may Dignidad Para sa Lahat” (Dignidad), a broad coalition of citizens’ groups calling for reforms in the government’s social service system. Dignidad was launched in a forum in Quezon city on Monday.

“It’s a shot at the moon, but we still have to make that call. It was a unanimous vote for both Houses, on this bill. But when it was vetoed by the President, where are they now?” said Ed Tadem, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, one of the groups under Dignidad.

“As a matter of principle, they should [override the veto] if they have the political will. Congress should stand on its own, show it’s an independent branch of government and not just submit to a co-equal branch. It’s the proper and decent thing to do,” Tadem insisted.

Dignidad also called for an audit of SSS funds, and for the resignation of SSS officials for “conspiring on the grand deception” of presenting the agency as having no funds for the implementation of the pension hike.

Tadem pointed out that P510 billion in government funds were not spent under Aquino’s administration from 2011 to 2014.

“There is a mismanagement of SSS and government funds. The government has reserve funds and savings, applied for purposes that are not necessary,” Tadem complained.

Tadem underscored the “numerous incentives and tax holidays” the government has been granting to corporations and investors, the P30 billion granted to recapitalise the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in 2014, and the BSP’s lending $1 billion to bail out ailing Europeans bankers under the International Monetary Fund’s Financial Transaction Plan.

“Where are our priorities?” Tadem asked, rhetorically.

That government budgeting just had “wrong prioritization” was the same critique offered by former congressman and now senatorial candidate Walden Bello, who noted that under the “auto-appropriations law,” the first cut of the government budget has always been reserved for foreign debt service payment.

“We are the only country in the whole word that adopted the auto-appropriations law,” Bello pointed out, in the Dignidad launch forum. “If we only had the right prioritization, we could channel that money to infrastructure [projects] and social protection,” he added.

But “the government is too cowardly to say that they want changes in the terms of debt payment,” Bello said.

Rene Ofreneo, spokesperson of Dignidad, noted that social protection was a right guaranteed under the Philippine Constitution, under section 9 of Article II. “It is the duty of the government to give social protection [to its citizens],” Ofreneo said.

Meanwhile, as part of Dignidad’s call for pubic mobilization to protest the veto of the SSS pension hike, another of the coalition’s members, the Sanlakas partylist, hounded lawmakers on Tuesday in their known residences and district offices in Laguna, Cavite, Tacloban, Cebu, Negros, Bukidnon, Davao City, Davao del Sur, Zamboanga del Sur, and Iligan City.

Sanlakas secretary-general Aaron Pedrosa, in a statement, challenged the House of Representatives legislators to “live on a measly monthly income of P1,200, the minimum amount received by SSS pensioners, if only to understand the unbearable poverty and misery of 1.9 million elderly Filipinos.”  SFM