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Saturday, February 08, 2003
Sonny defends Tom
By Charmaine Y. Rodriguez & Karen M. Flores
CEBU -- Sens. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. and Sergio "Serge" Osmeņa III found nothing wrong with Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeņa's decision to disburse P32 million to the barangays allied with the administration.
And while he parried accusations that he used his pork barrel to push certain candidates in last year's barangay elections, Sen. John "Sonny" Osmeņa Friday defended Tomas on accusations of favoritism among village leaders.
Like him and all politicians, he said it is natural for the mayor to decide to use limited resources to fund projects of "friends and supporters, not of those fighting me."
Sonny, who chaired the Senate finance committee for four years, also defended his cousin by saying the mayor was right to exercise his discretion on how the P32 million in aid to barangays should be spent.
The city councilors only have themselves to blame now that the mayor has sole authority on how the money should be spent and who the recipients should be. "Ga-tanga sila," Sonny said with a laugh in his news conference Friday.
In the appropriation ordinance, the council should have already asked that the disbursements be itemized if they wanted some control over them.
Discretion
Pimentel, principal author of the Local Government Code, said the mayor has the discretion to release the aid, even to his political allies, as long as it is not part of the regular share of the barangays.
"Ayuda man na. Additional na nga kwarta so depende na sa mayor," Pimentel told radio dyLA yesterday. (That's additional funds so it depends on the mayor.)
He added that it is not even necessary for the City Council to approve the release of the funding if it was already disbursed as lump sum appropriation.
Barangay captains who are political enemies of Tomas may file a case against the mayor if they feel he committed a violation, Pimentel suggested.
However, he said they could also opt to get back at the mayor through politics.
"Silutan nila si Tom Osmeņa pinaagi sa politika," he added.
The release of the barangay aid was questioned by the City Council, which referred the matter to the Commission on Audit and the Department of Budget and Management for comment.
The Office of the Ombudsman-Visayas has also asked the two agencies to comment on how the fund was spent and how this was disbursed.
Tomas had assured some of his "worried" allies in a closed-door meeting last Thursday that they could use the assistance and reiterated that he is exercising local autonomy in giving from P250,000 to P1 million to village chiefs.
'Unfair'
With Pimentel taking his side, Tomas welcomed DILG Secretary Joey Lina's order for an investigation on the release of the P32-million aid.
However, he cited as "unfair" a newspaper report accusing him of "thumbing his nose at the ombudsman."
Osmeņa earlier challenged the anti-graft office to also charge President Arroyo and Sonny for giving financial assistance to their allies.
"That's unfair. I respect the ombudsman. I'm just establishing my defense," he said.
The mayor said if he violated any law, they should cite it to him.
"I'm going to insist on that. I'm not thumbing the nose of anybody. Everybody-the editorials, my own councilors, the opposition are against me. If I'm a criminal, please cite the law that I broke," he added.
Sonny called a news conference Friday to answer Tomas' statement that the ombudsman should investigate him too because he used money in his Countrywide Development Fund to support barangay captains allied with the Kugi Uswag Sugbo in the city's south district.
Sonny said all disbursements had proper documentation including the special allocation release order for barangay projects that were included in Cebu City's annual investment plan for 2001.
This amounted to P15 million.
Besides, merely funded projects that Tomas refused to support "when he played his usual partisan hand when he assumed office."
Barangay captains approached him and asked for financial assistance, so he helped.
Common practice
But as for playing favorites, "I do not begrudge him of that attitude. That is a common day-to-day practice of any politician," Sonny said.
Congress, the secretary of the Department of Budget and Management and even the President are guilty of this because when the budget is drafted, "we play favorites because all the requests for funding are far greater than the resources."
"We have to choose and give higher priority to others. If the ombudsman has to investigate favoritism, they should investigate the entire Congress. There's an annual ritual of playing favorites there," he said.
Meanwhile, City Attorney Ramiro Madarang is advising the City Council to write a letter to Pasajero Motors Corp. and ask the company to get back the three dump trucks delivered to City Hall weeks ago.
Madarang said the City may also inform the dealer that it will charge storage fees for the trucks, which are now at the Cebu City Transport Commission garage.
Apart from the P32-million aid, the City Government also referred to COA the P17.5-million deal, following complaints that the trucks are not brand new.
The City Council is also scheduled to take up next week, the mayor's veto on the resolution renewing the contract of services of his former consultant Arturo Barrit, who was accused by Councilors Gerardo Carillo and George Rama of trying to bribe them with P100,000 each so they would not divulge the "defects" noted on the trucks. (Sun.Star Cebu) |
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