Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat Jr. (INQUIRER FILE PHOTO)
The “legitimate” minority bloc in the House of Representatives on Tuesday doused reports that the pork barrel is back in the proposed P3.35-trillion national budget.
In a press conference, the minority contingent of lawmakers led by Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat Jr. said the representatives were told to submit a list of hard and soft projects worth P80 million to be included as line items in the proposed General Appropriations Act (GAA).
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But Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said the identification of projects before the budget is approved is not equivalent to an identification of projects after the enactment of the budget, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in scrapping the congressional lumpsum Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), at the height of a scam of using the pork barrel in ghost projects for kickbacks.
“This is not a violation of he Supreme Court decision on the PDAF, because all of these would be incorporated in the GAA. And there is no post-budget approval to be done by members of the Congress, which was the one invalidated by the Supreme Court in the PDAF case, post-approval intervention,” Lagman said.
Lagman said the practice of requesting a list of projects does not fall under post-budget enactment intervention, which was the practice before when solons dipped their hands into the congressional lump sum funds or pork barrel for pet projects.
The pork barrel has been used as a political patronage tool for administration allies in Congress.
“Ano ba ang post-approval intervention (What is post-approval intervention)? After the GAA has been enacted, one, yung (the) request for realignment, that’s post-approval. Hindi na pwede yan (That’s not allowed). Two, yung (the) belated identification of projects. Bawal na rin yan (That’s also not allowed). You should be able to identify projects and include it in the GAA,” Lagman said.
For his part, Baguilat said requesting a list of projects to be included in the budget has been a practice in the previous Congress after the Supreme Court scrapped the PDAF.
Baguilat said it is a lawmaker’s duty to bring developments projects to their constituents.
“Tungkulin ng kongresista (The duties of a congressman is), lawmaking, oversight, and to bring home the development projects to your own districts,” Baguilat said.
“As defined by the Supreme Court ruling, bawal na yung post-budget approval identification of congressman (post-budget approval identification of congressman is not allowed). But yung privilege of members of the House of Representatives to identify projects to remain part of the National Expenditure Program, and later sa GAA, it’s still there,” Baguilat said.
Lagman said representatives should not be faulted for thinking of their constituents’ interests in requesting for projects in the budget.
“Why should we deny our districts the opportunity to have viable and credible projects? Hindi kasalanan kung kami ay magsusubmit (It’s not our fault if we submit) (ng list of projects) consistent with the requirements of the leadership of the House. We’re trying to protect our constituents,” Lagman said.
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After submitting the proposed National Expenditure Program (NEP) for 2017 to the House of Representatives on Monday, Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno denied that there is a form of a pork barrel in the proposed P3.35-trillion national budget.
But Diokno said there is no “hard and fast” rule in the practice of requesting projects from the department, and that lawmakers are entitled to request projects based on their constituents’ needs.
READ: Diokno: No pork in proposed 2017 budget, but…
“The infrastructure allocation would not be based on per congressman and senator… Those are rumors but they are not true. There is no PDAF in this budget. Let’s put it that way,” Diokno said.
“It is the right of congressman to request for what’s good for their constituents… Between, for example, a district engineer and a congressman, I would rather give the congressman the right to request and identify some projects. The district engineer is not elected, the congressman is elected. It’s just proper to give them credit when they request,” Diokno added.
Said to be the fiscalizer in Congress especially in scrutinizing the budget, the minority bloc pertains to the lawmakers who did not vote for the winning Speaker in the House of Representatives. The lawmakers who voted for the winning speaker form the majority bloc.
This minority bloc is led by Baguilat, the second placer in the Speakership race, although they were not recognized by the majority coalition, which supposedly backed the minority bid of the official minority leader Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez. RAM/rga
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