Vote-buying with ‘sukli?’

Caloocan City mayor and congressional candidate Enrico “Recom” Echiverri is questioning in court a Commission on Elections resolution that he claims allows lawmakers to use pork barrel funds to buy votes.

He cited the case of four voters who got checks from a congressman’s staff members who later demanded huge cuts from the money.

The camp of 1st District Rep. Oscar Malapitan, the target of the complaint, dismissed the move as part of a “desperate political ploy.”

Echiverri has filed a petition in the Caloocan Regional Trial Court questioning the validity of Comelec Resolution 9660, which allows congressmen to use their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or pork barrel, to support projects started before the election period.

He sought a temporary restraining order on the resolution, particularly to prevent Malapitan, who is now running for mayor, from using his pork barrel for an alleged vote-buying scheme.

He cited the alleged “modus operandi” of Malapitan’s camp wherein checks worth P3,000 each were given to some residents to be cashed at the Department of Social Welfare and Development’s (DSWD) main office in Quezon City.

Echiverri produced the purported affidavits of four women who got the checks from Malapitan’s people in exchange for their support. After cashing the checks, they were again met by the lawmaker’s staff members who collected P2,600 each. The women were therefore left with only P400 each.

When news of the scheme reached barangay (village) officials, they summoned the congressman’s staffers and ordered them to return the P2,600, he said.

Reached for comment, Betsy Malapitan, the congressman’s niece and chief of staff, maintained that the checks were lawfully issued as a form of medical assistance to indigent residents and that the amount was automatically deductible from the lawmaker’s PDAF.

“The DSWD handles every step of the process. Even they (DSWD personnel) have denied this accusation,” she said.

She also denied that her fellow staff members had taken cuts from the beneficiaries’ money. “Does this mean that after buying their votes for P3,000, we still asked for ‘sukli’ (change)?” she said in jest.