President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday warned Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and Marinduque Rep. Lord Allan Velasco to resolve the leadership row at the House of Representatives and pass next year’s P4.5 trillion budget on time or else he will be forced to make his move.
“Either you resolve the issue – the impasse – and pass the budget legally and constitutionally….[or] I will do it for you,” the President said in his opening remarks during an unscheduled meeting with Cabinet officials that was aired on PTV-4.
“I am not threatening anyone. I have no ambition to threaten anyone. All I am telling you is if you do not solve the problem, then I will solve the problem for you,” he added.
Duterte chided the House leadership for being focused on keeping their positions while Filipinos continue to suffer from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We always forget that there is something higher than just delaying or maneuvering in Congress because everybody wants to be Speaker,” he said.
“So people are dying, people are sick, people need medicines – this is why we prepared the budget.”
“If we screw up, people will not ask who is responsible for the mess that we are in right now. They don’t care. They will just remember it happened during the Duterte administration. They will not mention ‘ah that Alan in Congress or Lord.’ They will just blame the Duterte administration,” the President added.
Earlier, the Palace said the President may ask Congress to convene a special session to ensure the passage of the proposed 2021 national budget.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said the President is not keen to operate on a reenacted budget because government projects would have to be delayed and the measures to address the COVID-19 pandemic would be affected if the 2021 national budget is not passed on time.
In televised briefing, Roque said the President may ask both the Senate and House of Representatives to convene in a special session after the next adjournment in December if necessary.
The Palace official insisted that the Senate has enough time to scrutinize the proposed national budget before the year ends.
“The Senate can continue its own deliberations on the budget because it does not depend on the budget hearing of the House,” he said.
Roque declined to comment on allegations that Cayetano was holding the 2021 budget hostage amid a leadership struggle, saying the choice of speakership is an internal matter of the House.
Next year’s budget is expected to fund measures aimed at improving the country’s health care system, ensuring food security, increasing investments in public and digital infrastructure, and helping communities cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some senators, however, have raised the possibility of a reenacted 2020 budget after the House of Representatives on Tuesday suspended its session until Nov. 16 without passing the proposed P4.506-trillion national budget for 2021 on third and final reading.
The abrupt suspension took place amid a leadership squabble between Cayetano and Velasco, both allies of the President who brokered a term-sharing agreement for the speakership last year.
President Vicente Sotto III had said senators were hoping the budget bill would be transmitted before Congress goes on break on Oct. 17 so that they can study it during recess and take it up immediately for debates when session resumes on Nov. 16.
Velasco on Thursday joined the clamor of some of his colleagues at the House of Representatives to reopen the deliberations on the 2021 national budget.
“I join the collective call of my fellow lawmakers in the Senate and in the House of Representatives for the resumption of plenary sessions in Congress so we can carry out our sacred constitutional mandate of passing the proposed 2021 General Appropriations Act,” Velasco said in a statement issued late Thursday.
He denounced what he described as “the hasty approval” of House Bill 7727 or the 2021 General Appropriations Bill.
“The hasty approval of the spending plan of the Duterte administration on second reading without observing the full budget process and the abrupt suspension of House sessions imperiled the enactment of vital measures, particularly the 2021 budget—the single most important piece of legislation that we pass every year,” Velasco said.
“The premature termination of budget deliberations has signaled the alarm bells from the halls of Congress to the Senate, from the nation’s economic managers to the business community,” he added.
He also appealed to Cayetano to show his statesmanship and set aside political differences by allowing the discussions on the budget bill to resume.
“This is the time to set aside political differences against the backdrop of the ongoing pandemic. The budget issue is far bigger than the fight for speakership,” Velasco said.
He added that “blackmailing the Executive Department to cede to one’s personal ambition or holding the budget hostage to achieve one’s political whim is a great disservice to the Filipino people.”
“We should not fail our people whose lives and health needs depend on the programs of this government. We should not fail President Duterte in helping him achieve the agenda he has set to improve the lives of our countrymen,” he added.
The House Makabayan bloc also called for the resumption of theplenary deliberations.
At a press conference, Makabayan bloc lawmakers said the plenary deliberations should be resumed “so that the people’s call for health, education, jobs, and aid can be prioritized.”
“Those trying to block the budget deliberations are obviously the ones who will stand to gain, disregarding the people’s call for a national budget more attuned to the Filipino people’s current need during this time of the COVID pandemic,” the lawmakers said in a statement read by ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro.
The lawmakers said they have yet to take up the cuts in the Department of Health budget.
“These should have been discussed and debated on but now are all in limbo because of the abrupt termination of proceedings and premature suspension of the House session,” the lawmakers said in their statement.
Sotto on Thursday castigated Cayetano for having “the nerve” to pass the blame on the Senate if the 2021 national budget be delayed.
“The nerve! Passing the blame, it’s unacceptable!” said Sotto.
“They should pass it on third reading and submit to us before the original agreed date of the break (on) Oct. 17 which is the legislative calendar agreed on by both Houses. Oct 17 is a month away from Nov 17!” Sotto added.
Earlier, Cayetano said that a possible delay in the budget’s passage will no longer be the fault of the House but of the Senate.
Sotto said what was important was to find a workable solution to the impending impasse over the budget.
Senator Panfilo Lacson said he just suggested to Cayetano that he resume their session, which is merely suspended and not adjourned, before All Saints’ Day.
Lacson also told Cayetano that the session would be resumed just to approve on third and final reading the House version of the budget so that it could be transmitted to the Senate for deliberations.
He said the senators need at least a week to study the House version and submit their reports.
He said another week will be needed for the finance committee to consolidate everything and file its committee report.
“In so doing, we can start floor debates immediately after we resume session on Nov. 16, or even before that,” Lacson said.
He said this was the only way to ensure the timely passage of the budget.
Cayetano later apologized to Sotto.
“This noon, I called Senator Sotto and asked him if he can extend to the whole Senate that I apologize that my statement came off as a criticism or a passing of blame to the Senate if there is a delay in the budget,” Cayetano said in a Facebook Live post.
“I apologized to him that it came off that way but if you look at it, that was not my context,” he added.
He stood by his earlier statement that if the budget is reenacted, it would not be on the part of the House because the House leadership made sure that if there’s a delay, it will only be one day.
Cayetano also said he extended his apologies to Senator Juan Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Senate committee on finance, for the “inconvenience” that the late transmission of the budget would cause.
Sotto said he accepted the apology and that the senators would do their best to work on time.