Contact Details

Rm. N-411, House of Representatives, Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines
+63 2 931 5497, +63 2 931 5001 local 7370

Press Statements

  

LAGMAN: CONGRESS NO COURAGE

TO OVERRIDE PRESIDENT’S VETO

 

          While there is wisdom and legality to override the President’s veto of some budgetary provisions in the 2011 General Appropriations Act (GAA), any such attempt will be an exercise in futility since both the House of Representatives and the Senate do not have the will, courage and numbers to reject the President’s disapproval.

           The emasculation of the Congress by the President is imprinted in the GAA which is a virtual replica of the President’s annual budget proposal upon the bidding of the President for Congress to adopt his National Expenditure Program (NEP) virtually intact and untouched.

           There are sufficient legal and policy justifications to override the President’s veto with respect to the following:

 1) The veto of the use of savings from the Conditional Cash Transfer Program (CCT) to augment the appropriations for “basic education, maternal health and immunization” on the ground that it is a congressional intrusion on the constitutional power of the President to augment any item in the appropriations of the executive department is grossly misplaced.

           Under Section 25 (5) of Article VI of the Constitution the power of the President to augment any items in the GAA for executive offices from savings in other items of the executive branch is operationalized by authority of law.

           The subject provision in the 1987 Constitution reads in full: “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the President, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the heads of Constitutional Commissions may, by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.”

           Consequently, Special Provision No. 3 under the appropriations of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) mandating the augmentation of the appropriations for “basic education, maternal health and immunization” from savings in the CCT as determined by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and DSWD is completely legal and consistent with the Constitution.

           It is Congress which has the mandate under the Constitution to authorize the President to augment appropriations of executive offices from savings within the executive department, and such congressional mandate includes the power to direct to what agencies the savings should be realigned.

           Moreover, the augmentation of the appropriations for education and health are germane to the CCT because the Departments of Education (DepEd) and Health (DOH) are allied departments with the DSWD in the implementation of the CCT.

           2) The veto of the requirement for legislative consultation in the release and implementation of lump sum appropriations is likewise a misconstruction of the Executive’s authority to implement the GAA.

           The congressional power of appropriation does not end in the enactment of the GAA.

           It extends to the implementation of the budget law as the oversight function is inherent to Congress, while the power of the President to implement the budget is not absolute.

           The legislative oversight function is particularly critical with respect to lump appropriations in order to delimit the discretion of the Executive because the implementation of lump sums is fraught with possibilities of abuse and misuse.

           3) The rejection of legislative authorization for borrowings in excess of a debt ceiling of 55% of the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is another instance of an undue attachment by the President to executive prerogatives at the expense of shared fiscal discipline and in derogation of the principle of check and balance enshrined in the Constitution.

           Runaway borrowings will have to be contained because debt service is inflated and the delivery of social services imperiled.

Press Statements

 

REQUIEM FOR CONGRESSIONAL

POWER TO APPROPRIATE FUNDS

 

          President Aquino signed today a P1.645-billion General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 2011 which is a subservient copycat of the President’s National Expenditure Program (NEP).

         Even the traditional provisions ensuring the oversight function of the Congress over the Executive’s implementation of the national budget were reportedly vetoed.

           This completed the emasculation of the independent Congressional power to enact the annual appropriations.

          The Office of the President did not only propose the national budget through the National Expenditure Program (NEP). It also virtually appropriated the national budget through a rubberstamp majority in the Congress – both in the House and in the Senate.

           For the first time in Philippine legislative history after martial law, Malacañang has effectively transformed the Congress into a colossal subservient and faithful photocopying machine – reproducing the NEP in the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) almost in the entirety of the President’s proposal with minimal realignments but with an exact total of P1.645 trillion as a reflected in the President’s original submission.

           There is a categorical and persistent instruction from Malacañang to have the NEP untouched and undiminished, effectively subverting the power of the Congress, particularly the House, over the public purse as enshrined and mandated by the Constitution.

           As a result of Malacañang’s undue and omnipresent interference in the budget process, not a single centavo was cut from the original proposal of P1.645 trillion as if the Office of the President drafted a magnum opus of a national budget highlighted by a P21 billion Conditional Cash Transfer program and a P15 billion Public-Private Partnership hazy outlay, among other huge lump sums.

           Compare this to previous years where the Congress reduced the President’s budget by P400 million in 2010; P300 million in 2009; P300 million in 2008; and P200 million in 2007. For 2011, to reiterate, not a single centavo was cut.

          For 2011, the Congress (the House and the Senate collectively), realigned only P2.306 billion which is much less than one percent of the 1.645 trillion budget.

          Compare this with the previous years when Congress truly exercised its plenary power of appropriation with the following realignments: P67.1 billion in 2010; P56.5 billion in 2009; P38.5 billion in 2008; and P20.5 billion in 2007.

          What is worse is that even the meager realignments in the 2011 national budget were obviously errant and unwarranted. Consider again the following:

          1. P750 million was slashed from the school building program which is already inadequate to respond to the huge classroom backlog. This amount was realigned to 5,000 additional teacher positions which should have been funded from the CCT since education is an allied program.

          2. P200 million was reduced from the already small appropriation of P931 million for “family health and family planning”, thereby reducing this allocation to P731 million. It should be underscored that the bulk of the original outlay was not for the purchase of contraceptives.

          3. And what happened to all of the proposed individual amendments of Members of the House who were told to submit their proposals to the Committee on Appropriations? Not a single significant amendment found fruition in the GAA, except the proposal of the Minority for the creation of a Congressional Oversight Committee on the CCT and the realignment of 2011 savings from the CCT to the Department of Health and the Department of Education, which unfortunately and improvidently were both effectively scuttled by the Senate.

          We might as well have a requiem for the demise of the congressional power to appropriate public funds.

Press Statements

 

LIBERATING THE WOMB

NOT TERRORISM – LAGMAN

 

It is the height of antediluvian hyperbole for the leadership of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to equate the RH advocacy to “extra-judicial killings, insurgency and terrorism”.

 The liberation of the womb from distressing and even fatal unremitting pregnancies has been erroneously likened by the CBCP President bishop Nereo Odchimar to the womb becoming a “ferocious threat” to unborn children.

 The history of Christianity is so engulfed in terrorism from the persecution of early Christians to the counter-persecution of both heretics and believers to preserve the hegemony of the Roman Catholic Church particularly during the Inquisitions, that any development or proposal which does not complement Church dogma is conveniently labeled “terroristic” like the RH bills.

 These acts of church terrorism extended to the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period which was dominated by the Church and are perpetuated today with threats of excommunication against perceived religious dissenters like RH and pro-women advocates.

 Both modern contraception and the Church-prescribed natural methods like rhythm and natural modern modalities like the Billings method, all aim to prevent pregnancy or conception, and this is why they are collectively referred to as “contra-ception”.

 If pregnancy or conception is effectively avoided, no life or fetus is developed in the womb, and consequently there is no “threat to the life of the unborn” because no unborn exists.

 The free and responsible determination by parents of the number and spacing of their children can never be considered “terrorism”.

 The RH bill is far from being “terroristic” since it is pro-quality of life. It saves lives by greatly reducing the incidence of abortions and decreases maternal and infant mortality even as it welcomes the wanted and properly-timed birth of children.

Press Statements

 

             The Supreme Court is unlikely to reverse its decision which voided the “Truth Commission” as unconstitutional since the motion for reconsideration filed by Solicitor General Jose Cadiz is a mere replay of the Aquino administration’s previous submissions.

             The settled doctrine is that a motion for reconsideration will not prosper if it is bereft of any new arguments not previously resolved by the court because rehashed arguments will not suffice.

             The Aquino administration’s insistence that Executive Order No. 1 which created the “Truth Commission” did not infringe on the equal protection clause is belied  by the Executive Order’s precise provisions which solely targeted for investigation the officials and personnel of the administration of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, as pointed out by the Supreme Court.

              The Supreme Court has ruled that the particularization of the past dispensation is not a proper and reasonable classification because it would make corruption seem a monopoly of a specific regime.

              The campaign against graft must be a crusade for all seasons and must transcend the barriers of periodic regimes.

             The Aquino administration’s penchant for castigating the past administration led the Supreme Court to opine that the creation of the “Truth Commission” with a selective and discriminatory jurisdiction is an “adventure in partisan hostility” and “a vehicle for vindictiveness and selective retribution”.

             The scuttling of the “Truth Commission” by the Supreme Court did not grant immunity to the past administration’s officials who are still subject to investigation by and indictment before existing prosecutory and judicial agencies.

             It is highly suspicious and surprising why the Aquino administration would waste time in defending a fatally infirm “Truth Commission” instead of rolling up its sleeves in filing with reasonable dispatch graft cases against suspected culprits before the proper fora like the Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman.

             This patent procrastination makes the much-ballyhooed President Aquino campaign against corruption a pathetic propaganda and a partisan vendetta.

             Contrary to the assertion of Solicitor General Cadiz, what the Supreme Court struck down was the constitutionality of the creation of the “Truth Commission”, not the enobling wisdom of eliminating corruption.

            Even granting that the violation of the equal protection clause can be surmounted, EO 1 remains irremediably defective on two more grounds: (a) the President usurped the power of Congress to create a public office; and (b) the “Truth Commission” duplicates and supplants the constitutional jurisdiction of the Ombudsman over graft cases.

            These additional infirmities were exhaustively discussed in the concurring opinions of several justices, including Chief Justice Renato Corona, and were not addressed directly in Malacanang’s appeal.

Press Statements

                                     LAGMAN: SOTTO EXORCISED AN P880-M

PHANTOM FUND FOR CONTRACEPTIVES

 

The reported P880-M cut from the alleged “budget” for condoms is both a cruel mirage and a gross misconception equating reproductive health solely to condoms and pills.

 The amount of P880-M supposedly cut by the Senate upon the initiative of Sen. Vicente Sotto III was neither originally included in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted by the President to the Congress nor subsequently incorporated in the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) approved by the House of Representatives and referred to the Senate.

 There is no specific amount for the purchase and distribution of condoms and pills which was deleted from the budget of the Department of Health (DOH) as documented in the Bicameral Conference Committee Report.

 Sotto gloats over the cut of a non-existent fund which Health Secretary Ona explained in a letter to Sen. Franklin Drilon, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, as a mere “alternative budgetary allocation” to answer the unmet contraceptive needs of currently married women of reproductive age based on the 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey, which was never funded.

To be exact, Sotto is exorcising from the budget of the DOH a phantom fund. If he can only tone down his self-righteousness he would realize that the supposed budget for condoms and other contraceptives in the amount of P880-M does not exist.

           Moreover, reproductive health covers a wide range of priority concerns including breastfeeding; maternal and infant health; treatment and prevention of infertility and sexual dysfunction, HIV-AIDS and breast and reproductive tract cancers; youth sexuality education; and voluntary family planning, including the use of both natural and modern family planning methods, among others.

           It is myopic to reduce the import of the RH bill to pills and condoms.

           A “condomized” mentality may be good for orthodoxy but is precarious for the reproductive health of our citizens.