The Palace has to blink on the budget standoff with the House of Representatives in order to foreclose the adverse consequences of a reenacted budget on the Executive.
The reaction of Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque that a reenacted budget favors the Executive is early sourgraping for a possible reenactment of the 2018 General Appropriations Act (GAA) consequent to the impasse on the adoption of a cash-based budgeting being pushed by Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno but unanimously opposed by legislators.
The House of Representatives and Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno are headed to an impasse on the adoption of annual cash-based appropriations in the 2019 General Appropriations Act (GAA) in lieu of the traditional obligation-based budgeting.
The Members of the House are all against Diokno’s innovation that has resulted to serious budgetary cuts.
The looming deadlock makes a reenactment of the 2018 GAA imminent as the remaining budget hearings have been suspended and the preparation of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) for first reading has been stopped pending the necessary amendments by Diokno and the Executive of the President’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year.
(This Counter-SONA should have been delivered by tradition by Rep. Edcel C. Lagman on 24 July 2018, a day after President Rodrigo Duterte delivered his SONA. The upheaval and intramurals in the House prevented its delivery. Rep. Lagman, on Monday, 30 July 2018, requested that his Counter-SONA be included in the records of the House.)
The sovereign people have the right to know the true state of the nation, even as they have the right to be heard on their sentiments and opinions on crucial issues affecting the country.
The enduring tradition of the authentic opposition’s counter SONA has the following beneficent objectives, among others:
To dismantle the President’s embellishments in his SONA disguising unflattering facts and figures, and expose the naked truth of the state of affairs;
Represent and ventilate the people’s articulated and collective voices on major problems besetting the country;
Bare to the people the import of issues and policies which the President failed to address in his SONA; and
Cite and criticize the administration’s failures and broken promises as well as appreciate any of the government’s measures of success.
(Statement of Rep. Edcel C. Lagman against the recognition of Rep. Danilo Saurez as “Minority Leader”)
Representative Danilo Suarez and his group cannot claim any iota of legitimacy to remain as the Minority in the House for the following overriding reasons:
The group of Rep. Danilo Suarez ousted themselves from the minority when they vigorously campaigned and voted for former President and Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the new Speaker.
It is foolhardy for Suarez and his group to insist that in the recent House upheaval there was a mere change in the position of Speaker and the rest of the major positions, including that of the minority leader, remain the same.
Although it was only the position of Speaker which was declared vacant, any change in the leadership of a legislative assembly, like the House of Representatives, necessarily results in changes in the composition of the majority and minority in the Chamber.
