Malacañang on Tuesday defended its proposal to spend P28 billion for a controversial task force to end communism, saying the insurgency needs to be addressed even during a pandemic, and vowed the money would not be used to fund election campaigns.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque on Tuesday sought to justify the proposal to increase the budget of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) from P19 billion in 2021 to P28.1 billion next year, despite the agency’s track record of red tagging and harassing government critics.
The funds would go toward poverty alleviation and development projects, Roque said.
He also denied allegations that part of the budget would be used to fund the election campaign of the ruling political PDP-Laban party.
Roque issued the statement in response to criticism from Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon that the government should cut on "wasteful expenses," saying the P28 million budget should instead be invested in the COVID-19 response.
“First, even if the pandemic is here, we know that hunger is the reason for activism. These projects will provide livelihood to those who are having a hard time, that is the reason why they become rebels,” Roque said.
The proposed budget increase is also in line with the government’s strategy on how the country will recover from the pandemic, which is “to provide more development projects.”
"This budget is in accordance with our target to have more development [and] livelihood projects to stir economic growth," he added.
He said the implementing agencies will still be the local government unit or the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), but the funds will come from the programs of the NTF-ELCAC.
“We have constitutional guarantees. We have a ban on public works projects during election time,” he said.
In his 2022 budget message, President Duterte, who chairs the NTF-ELCAC, said that his administration will continue to address the problems posed by “communist terrorist” activities.
Meanwhile, Roque slammed a party-list group for claiming that the NTF-ELCAC received an illegal fund transfer from the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG).
The militant Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives accused the DILG of making a ‘highly irregular’ fund transfer to the NTF-ELCAC.
“According to Secretary Año, what happened here wasn’t a fund transfer, but a downloading of funds from the DILG central office to their regional office, which was authorized under the General Appropriations Act of 2020,” Roque said.
Drilon on Tuesday vowed to root out wasteful and unnecessary government spending in the proposed P5.024-trillion 2022 national budget to ease the impact of the mounting national debt and expanding budget deficit.
He noted that the rising outstanding national debt, which is to be paid out of the taxpayers’ money, calls for eliminating unnecessary items in the budget.
"We need to get rid of the fat in the national budget. We must trim the bloated spending for the security sector next year so that we can ease the impact of the mounting debt and deficit on our national coffers,” Drilon said.
“The enormous debt is alarming. We are approaching the red alert zone for our debt and that can affect our financial standing. However, we can tolerate it as long as it goes to our pandemic response, and it is used for the much-needed ayuda (cash aid) for our countrymen,” Drilon also said.
The Senate leader said it would be up to Congress, where the power of the purse lies, to trim the excess fats and unnecessary spending in the budget such as the P28.1-billion anti-insurgency fund lodged under the NTF-ELCAC.
If the P28.1 billion and similar programs are deleted from the budget, it can help lower the borrowings and the deficit gap, Drilon said.
Also on Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto said the administration’s practice of pooling purchases has transformed two agencies—the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) and the Philippine International Trading Corp. (PITC)–into “mega parking lots of funds.”
These two agencies, he added, owe other agencies at least P63.1 billion, representing unused deposits and advance payments.