Judiciary answerable to Congress over budget requirements, says Abad

MANILA, Philippines—Budget Secretary Florencio Abad on Monday said the judiciary will be answerable to Congress should it fail to comply with the qualifications made by the executive branch for its proposed budget next year which included a quarterly report of how it spent its money.

Abad said the judiciary was questioning three of the four qualifications that the executive imposed in the proposed P1.8-trillion national budget for 2012.

These included the requirements that the judiciary has to use the money to fill up positions there; unspent money be reverted to the National Treasury; report quarterly how it spent its budget.

Abad said these were policies “applied to everybody in government,” including reporting of how the budget was spent.

“(The judiciary) said they may (report it), but I say they should,” Abad told reporters at the Philippine International Convention Center in Pasay City as he awaited the arrival of President Aquino, who was the keynote speaker of the event organized here by the National Anti-Poverty Commission.

He said that the judiciary has never reported how it spent its money.

“The basic principle is whether you are an agency who enjoys fiscal autonomy or not, your obligation to the people is to report to the people how you spent their money. Nobody should be exempt to that,” Abad said.

“It’s so basic in expenditure management that everything has to be reported to the people,” he added.

Asked whether there would be sanctions should the judiciary fail to comply with the new budget requirements, Abad said there were none.

But he said the judiciary was still “answerable” to Congress, which he stressed has created an oversight committee co-chaired by Sen. Franklin Drilon to oversee this matter.