House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. on Monday slammed Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno for allegedly fooling Congress when he allowed the approval of the supposed annual budget of the Duterte administration without amending the big-ticket items”•such as the billions in budgets in the congressional districts.
“They [DBM] are saying that Congress is ‘prohibited’ from touching the budget but when we talked to the President [Duterte], he said ‘just do what you have to do.’
“So that order was for us not to touch the budget, but in reality we are just being fooled,” Andaya, the representative of Camarines Sur’s first district, said in a privileged speech.
This developed as Diokno declined the House leadership’s invitation for him to attend Tuesday’s Question Hour to explain why the hundreds of billions of underspending for fiscal years 2016 and 2017.
Andaya said even before the 2019 budget could be approved, multi-billion flood-control projects in Sorsogon had already been bid out and awarded to a single proprietorship based in Bulacan.
Andaya called on Diokno to attend the Question Hour today, Tuesday, to shed light on the documents that showed that more than 80 percent of the flood control projects in Sorsogon were bid out and awarded to CT Leoncio Construction and Trading, a single proprietorship based in Bulacan.
While Diokno insisted there was no “pork insertions” in the proposed P3.757-trillion national budget for 2018, Senator Panfilo Lacson said Monday only those who continued to benefit from the pork barrel system would be happy, but it would be burdensome for the rest of the Filipinos.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo on Monday expressed confidence that Diokno could explain to the public the alleged pork barrel insertions in the proposed 2019 national budget.
He made the remark in connection with House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s large allocation in her district in Pampanga.
He said Arroyo sent him a message dismissing the claims that the insertions were pork barrel.
“She texted that Congressman Maricar Zamora had explained it already. Their explanation is that contrary to the allegations of pork barrel, they said that this time there were items and these items were given by different agencies and it was prior to the approval, they had been there,” Panelo said.
With 16 votes, no negative votes and abstentions, the Senate on Monday passed on third and final reading a joint resolution extending the validity of the 2018 appropriations for maintenance and other operating expenses and capital outlays until Dec. 31, 2019.
In approving Senate Joint Resolution 17, Senate President Vicente Sotto III said they were just extending until the end of 2019 the unused budget this year.
Andaya, in his speech, disclosed that while Diokno had prevented congressmen from amending the annual National Expenditure Program budget for 2019, a single contractor had cornered billions of funds from flood-control projects in the second district of Sorsogon and the lone district of Catanduanes without the knowledge of its Reps. Deogracias Ramos and Cesar Sarmiento.
“It would have been good if the [huge increase in the flood-control] budget [for 2018] went to flood-prone areas but nothing happened. It just went to districts that did not ask for flood-control [programs],” Andaya said.
The contractor just subcontracts the projects to other [contractors],” he said.
“It’s not even a corporation, it’s a single proprietorship just like a sari-sari store,” Andaya said.
Under the 2017 national budget for 2017, Andaya said, the budget for flood-control was only P73 billion. However, the amount suddenly shot up to P123 billion under the 2018 national budget.
`Andaya also hit Diokno over the latter’s statement that a reenacted budget would result in an economic slowdown, especially in the first and second quarter of 2019. With Nat Mariano
