President Rodrigo Duterte has vetoed the special provision in the 2021 national budget bill that would cut the operations of the forensic laboratory of the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO).
In his message to Congress after signing the P4.5-trillion spending plan for next year, Duterte said the provision is “inappropriate” as it “does not relate to particular appropriations in the budget.”
“The doctrine of ‘inappropriate provision’ enunciates, among others, that ‘when the legislature inserts inappropriate provisions in a general appropriation bill, such provisions must be treated as ‘items’ for purposes of the [Governor’s] item veto power over general appropriation bills,” Duterte said in his veto message to Senate President Vicente Sotto III and House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.
He said lawmakers cannot “encumber the general appropriation bill with veto-proof ‘logrolling measures,’ special interest provisions which could not succeed if separately enacted, or ‘riders’, substantive pieces of legislation incorporated in a bill to ensure passage without veto.”
PAO Chief Persida Rueda-Acosta thanked Duterte for his direct veto on the provision that she attributed to Senators Sonny Angara and Franklin Drilon.
The veto lifted the spirits of the kin of school children whose deaths have been linked to the controversial Dengvaxia vaccine being investigated by the PAO, as Rueda-Acosta vowed to pursue criminal and civil charges filed against former Health secretary Janette Garin and 38 others.
“We all feel relieved. The presidential veto has lifted our dampened spirits,” Sumachen Dominguez, president of the Samahan ng mga Magulang at Biktima ng Dengvaxia, told Manila Standard.
Dr. Erwin Erfe, PAO’s forensic division chief, earlier raised concerns the 206 Dengvaxia-related cases filed against Garin – now a lawmaker for Iloilo — and 38 other accused, including executives of Sanofi Pasteur Inc., might not win in court due to suppression of evidence.
“The forensic laboratory of PAO holds the pieces of evidence against all of the accused,” he said.
But with the President’s veto, Erfe believes the charges would now prosper.
Meanwhile, Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Ferdinand Gaite on Wednesday criticized as “unconstitutional and unsound” Duterte’s refusal to disclose to Congress how intelligence funds in the 2021 national budget would be spent.
Interviewed on ANC, Gaite said the use of P9.5 billion in confidential and intelligence funds of the Office of the President should be transparent.
“The supposed veto is definitely unconstitutional and unsound. According to our Constitution, a public office is a public trust. Every centavo that the government uses, even the President, must be accountable,” Gaite said.
The lawmaker hit Duterte’s office for having a large chunk of intelligence fund, which should instead go to the military and police, and called on his colleagues in Congress to be vigilant on how these funds would be spent.
Drilon earlier said PAO’s laboratory duplicates the forensic work of government investigative bodies and vowed to transfer its P19.5-million budget to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) instead to improve its crime laboratory.
The senator said PAO did not have the proper authority and mandate to create its own forensic unit that the office used to investigate and file cases related to the alleged deaths caused by the dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.
Even private health experts and Health officials have questioned PAO’s findings, Drilon said.