THE Makabayan bloc and Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate on Thursday denied giving out government funds to the New People’s Army to finance its rebellion against the government.
The two organizations have “always been transparent in our funds” since they joined the party-list elections in 2001, he said. “We are not funding the NPA,” he stressed.
He tagged as “dangerous” the allegations of the Duterte administration accusing some party-lists of having links to the Communist Party of the Philippines, and that the funds they received from the government went to the NPA to buy arms.
“It has been the same during the Arroyo administration, wherein we were vilified. This is dangerous since such vilification resulted in the killings of many of our members,” he said.
Speaking before government troops in Labanga, Zamboanga del Sur last, President Rodrigo Duterte accused several party-lists of getting money from government so they could fund the activities of the communist NPA.
He also called for the abolition of party-list system, saying many of its representatives do not belong to the poor and marginalized sector of society.
Zarate reacted to the President’s statement, saying “during the time that we had the allocation of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, we used it for the NPA, the no-permanent address people. These were the homeless whom we provided care through health facilities and education in schools.”
He said the President must look into the reports of the Commission on Audit as to how the party-lists had spent their pork barrel funds.
“If you check in with CoA, all of the government funds channeled to Bayan Muna and Makabayan bloc were not cited for misuse as other lawmakers were faced with misuse of their PDAF,” he added.
The Makabayan bloc composed of seven lawmakers from left-leaning party-list groups was not able to receive their PDAFs after the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, he said.
He said they even filed a measure to institutionalize the abolition of the abolish the PDAF system.
He maintained their groups never funded any rebel groups, citing the accusation came from the military and anti-peace groups trying to besmirch their reputation.
“We call on the President to ignore such accusations against the party-lists. We have not misused a single centavo of government money,” he said.
Apart from Zarate, the six other party-list lawmakers from the left-leaning Makabayan bloc are Representatives Antonio Tinio and Francisca Castro of Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Emmi de Jesus and Arlene Brosas of Gabriela Women’s Party, Ariel Casilao of Anakpawis, and Sarah Jane Elago of Kabataan.