The House of Representatives will shift its focus on its oversight function over government agencies to ensure the legislative agenda of President Rodrigo Duterte are properly implemented, Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Monday.
She said the House was either finished or almost done in passing several Palace-backed measures that Duterte mentioned during his State of the Nation Address in July.
“For the remaining months of the 17th Congress, the House is prepared to give the implementing departments and agencies the support that they may need, to the extent that they make this pivot from policy to action,” Arroyo said during her luncheon meeting with House reporters.
She also supported the decision of House Minority Leader Danilo Suarez to summon Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno to explain the government’s alleged massive underspending amounting to P1.3 trillion in 2017. Suarez, representative of the third district of Quezon, is the chairman of the House oversight committee.
“The oversight wants to look into the underspending, that is a very good function, that is a very good intention,” Arroyo said.
“This is a free assembly with freedom of thought and freedom of action as long as you stay within the parliamentary rules. If they want to have a question hour, it’s their call.”
Suarez, who filed a resolution to call Diokno, said Duterte may not know the real situation on the ground, and that his economic managers may not be telling the whole truth to him, including the unemployment problem.
Arroyo said the House oversight committee will exercise its function objectively.
“I think oversight has a better tone than an inquiry supposedly in aid of legislation,” Arroyo said.
“We’d like to find out what are the reasons why and how we can help address those reasons. The whole idea is to help.”
Arroyo also said that during the first two-and-a-half years of the Duterte presidency, the Executive put in place a set of policies to guide the country’s economic and infrastructure development in the coming years.
“For its part, the Legislative enacted a set of laws in support of those policies. This week, the House can report with confidence that it has already either passed or is in the final mile of the effort to pass, the President’s legislative agenda as he announced in his 2018 State of the Nation Address,” Arroyo said.
“Thus the country already has a good policy framework in place, supported by good legislation.”