Congressmen on Saturday accused senators of “showboating on Bayanihan 2 in aid of reelection” when some members criticized them for pushing for the allocation of P10-billion for the tourism sector under the proposed Bayanihan to Recover as One Act for the construction of toilets, roads and other infrastructures.
Deputy Speaker and Laguna Rep. Dan Fernandez in particular questioned why Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and other senators were now scoffing at the consolidated Bayanihan 2 bill when the chamber’s contingent to the bicameral (bicam) conference committee had given its approval of the measure, leading to its ratification by the Senate last Thursday.
The House is set to ratify the Bayanihan 2 bill when it resumes session on Monday (Aug. 24).
After the bill’s ratification by both chambers, the consolidated Bayanihan 2 will then be submitted to Malacañang for President Rodrigo Duterte’s approval and enactment into law.
“If our high and mighty senators feel that the consolidated Bayanihan 2 bill was not up to their standards, then why did they approve it during the bicam talks?” Fernandez asked.
“The truth is a majority of the good features of Bayanihan 2 were actually introduced by the House and were only adopted by the Senate.”
According to Fernandez, the senators critical to the P10-billion funding for the tourism sector “appear conflicted.”
“They want to make it appear that they did their part in passing Bayanihan 2, obviously to worm their way into the good graces of an overwhelming majority of our people who support President Duterte and are appreciative of his Administration’s comprehensive COVID-19 response measures, but they are at the same time distancing themselves from the bill, obviously to please the ragtag band of anti-government critics,” Fernandez said.
He said: “It is clear as daylight that these pathetic senators have been seized by political schizophrenia in slyly positioning way ahead of the 2022 elections at the expense of the House of Representatives. This is showboating in aid of reelection.”
Fernandez said he took offense at the insinuations made by Zubiri and some other senators that the House had supposedly fought for “a particular personal interest” and that it was only the Senate that had pushed for certain provisions out of their so-called “pure advocacy.”
In defense of his colleagues at the lower chamber, Rep. Michael Defensor of Anakalusugan said the House had actually come up with the superior version of the Bayanihan 2 bill, as shown by the fact that some 40 major provisions of the final version of this measure were actually introduced by the House contingent and merely adopted by its Senate counterpart during the three-day marathon deliberations.
“My suggestion is to authorize the secretariat to release the minutes of the sessions of the bicam talks so the public would know who had presented the majority of the major provisions in the final Bayanihan 2 bill and who among the bicam members had actually been lobbying actively for which interest groups during the entire discussions to come up with the consolidated version,” Defensor said.
If one were to read the minutes of the deliberations, he/she said it would show that the members of the House contingent were fair and objective during the discussions on some of the contentious provisions of Bayanihan 2, Defensor pointed out.
The House proposal for the P10-billion allocation for the infrastructure projects of the Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority were among the contentious issues
Senators have wanted that the 10-billion fund be retained as direct funding support for the tourism industry through the Department of Tourism in the form of soft loans earmarked for this particular or specific sector.
“What the senators, the DOT officials and the big industry groups like the Tourism Congress of the Philippines had wanted was a travesty because, first, the DOT has no legal authority to administer loans for tourism establishments or groups, and, second, it contravened the position of the Department of Finance that there should be no earmarking of funds for particular sectors and that the funds should be coursed through GFIs (government financial institutions),” Defensor said.
He added the funds intended as soft loans for micro, small and medium-scale enterprises and other groups like the tourism and transport sectors were, in the bicam-approved version, coursed through the Land Bank of the Philippines, Development Bank of the Philippines, Small Business Corporation and Philippine Guarantee Corporation.
He noted that the House had pushed for the P10 billion TIEZA allocation in the bicam talks because of infrastructure investment’s high multiplier effects on the economy and as an immediate solution to the problem of providing jobs to many of the tourism industry’s 5.7 million workers who have lost their jobs temporarily or permanently as a result of the economic crisis triggered by the global pandemic.