ALLOCATIONS amounting to billions of pesos were inserted in the proposed 2019 budget for the districts represented by former House speaker and Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez, former majority leader and Ilocos Norte 1st District Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas, and former Davao 1st District Rep. now Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles.
Among the three lawmakers, Alvarez is on top of the list with allocations of P5 billion, an allegation that the former Speaker denied.
House Majority Leader and Camarines Sur 1st District Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. revealed this in an interview on Monday, December 11, amid allegations that his district and that of House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo received the lion’s share of the supposedly "pork barrel insertions" in the proposed P3.757-trillion national budget.
Alvarez and Fariñas, in reaction, said they do not have any idea concerning the amount of allocations for their respective districts.
“I don’t know with him (Andaya). I have not attended a single budget hearing. I have not even seen the NEP,” said Alvarez.
Alvarez added that the Congress has nothing to do with the preparation of the NEP, saying it is solely the job of the executive to propose the national budget to the Congress.
For his part, Fariñas said there is no way he can add anything to the budget of his district because just like Alvarez, he also has not atteneded any budget hearing.
“I don’t know the allocation for my district but everything listed therein was in the NEP submitted by the President. I left the Majority two days after the SONA when I joined the Minority, and there is no way I could have added anything to it. I did not attend any budget hearing since then as I was on medical leave starting Sep. 15 when I suffered injuries from Typhoon Ompong.”
“But I will not be surprised if the amount is accurate since my district has one of the longest national highways in the country from Laoag to the boundary of Cagayan province. The bridge alone for the Laoag-Bacarra bypass road is about P1B (multi year allocations),” Fariñas added.
Nograles has yet to respond to the claims of the House leadership.
Andaya, during the interview, disclosed that he will send President Rodrigo Duterte a letter disputing the accusations against him and Arroyo in response to the statement of Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo requiring the Office of the Speaker to explain the alleged anomalous infrastructure allocation for her district.
“In the 2019 General Appropriations Bill approved by the House of Representatives recently, the Speaker’s district currently ranked 60th and the Office of the Majority Leader ranked 110th in terms of appropriations for the Department of Public Works and Highway,” Andaya said in the letter obtained by the media.
“On the top of the list with the biggest DPWH projects is the district of former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez with P5 billion, while the district of the former Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas was allocated P3.5 billion, and the district of former Chairman of the House Committee and Appropriations Karlo Alexei Nograles received P4 billion,” Andaya further said.
Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson earlier said the proposed infrastructure allocation for 2019 for the second district of Pampanga, which is represented by Arroyo, amounts to P2.2 billion while a district in Camarines Sur district believed to be represented by Andaya received P 1.9 billion.
Andaya also told the President in the letter that during the budget deliberations of the House of Representatives in the proposed General Appropriations Act, they found that there are huge funding spikes in “favored districts,” which the Department of Public Works and Highways knew nothing about.
“I am certain that if this fine print of the budget was brought to the President’s attention by his Budget officials, he would not have countenanced it as it would violate his oft-repeated promise to the people of equal progress for all,” Andaya said.
“What the present House leadership did was, in a manner compliant with all laws, to purge the budget of development favoritism and as much as possible apportion next year’s spending to all districts in a fair manner,” he added.
Andaya said the district of Alvarez as far as allocations are concerned tops the list of all 238 congressional districts in the country in the NEP and in the House approved budget.
“Nung binigay nung executive yung budget dito, yung tatlong former officials were in the top 10. Number one si former speaker... pagkatapos dito sa House number one pa din siya, top 10 pa din sila,” Andaya said.
Andaya belied accusations that Arroyo instructed the appropriations committee of the House to increase the funding for her allies.
Andaya also said the House leadership had already brought up the issue before the President.
“Nung tinanong namin si Presidente sabi niya samin hindi ko alam ‘yan (When we asked the President, he said, 'I am not aware of that'),” Andaya said.
He said it is now up to the bicameral conference committee tasked to discuss the disagreeing provisions of the proposed GAA to decide what to do with the supposed questionable allocation for the mentioned districts.
Arroyo distanced herself from the 2019 budget, saying it was the House appropriations committee that worked on it.
“The budget, it's a joint effort so they have been working on that - the majority leader together with the appropriations committee. They are the ones who know the details. All I know is that I am not the biggest recipient of any budget,” said Arroyo.
“I did not prepare the budget. There was an appropriations committee that prepared the budget. Let them answer it, not me because that's between them and the public works,” Arroyo further said.
Arroyo continued: “... the important thing is that the two allegations I wanted to check that I cornered it? No. There were 60 to 90 more who got bigger allocations than my distrcit. Second allegation, they were my allies? No. The previous leadership of the House have bigger multiples of the budget of my district.”
Asked if she thinks she is being unfairly accused, she answered in the affirmative.
“Yes. Why should I deprive the people of my district? I'm only upper middle class as far as allocations are concerned,” Arroyo said. (SunStar Philippines)