House backs limit on President’s use of Malampaya funds

MANILA, Philippines - The House of Representatives strongly supports proposals to amend Presidential Decree 910 to expand the use of proceeds from the Malampaya natural gas project for poverty alleviation programs and limit the discretion of the President in using the huge fund, Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. said yesterday.

Belmonte said the old decree was issued by the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos in 1976 when he had the power to issue laws, so he had wide discretion to use the Malampaya fund, currently estimated at P190 billion, from revenues of natural gas fields in Palawan.

Under the decree, the fund should be disbursed for energy-related projects, and for other purposes that may be decided by the President, “which became a huge door by which so much money exited,” Belmonte said.

“It now becomes a question whether (disbursing Malampaya funds) can be done by the president at a time when he no longer has lawmaking powers,” Belmonte said.

“Even if (releasing funds) is the sole discretion of the president, we must put qualifiers. Even if we leave the discretion of the president, it should still have certain limits,” he said.

Belmonte stressed the need to have amendments “to remove such a wide open thing, or at least to put guidelines into it. Because it was virtually without guidelines, except the good intentions, of the president.”

He said President Aquino had agreed to the amendments proposed by his allies in the House.

Presidential deputy spokesperson Abigail Valte said Malacañang is leaving it up to lawmakers to amend the Marcos decree.

“We will leave it up to the wisdom of the legislature if they would want to amend or to add specifics to that clause ‘and such other purposes’,” she said.

Valte said amending PD 910 would do well since there are “variance of interpretations of several parties or at least other administrations that have been employing or drawing from the Malampaya funds.”

She said it would be best at this stage to check the “specific purposes that would fall under” an amended version of PD 910.

“At this point, it’s not yet clear what have they enumerated, or if the enumerations will be exclusive or will carry a catch-all phrase, which tends to be interpreted one way or another, depending on what you’re looking at,” Valte said.

Belmonte added there are also calls in the House to expand the use of the Malampaya fund to include poverty alleviation programs while allowing energy-related projects to have the biggest share.

The Department of Justice earlier filed plunder raps against several individuals, including former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, for allegedly misusing some P900 million in Malampaya funds in 2009. Arroyo’s lawyers have denied the allegations. – Delon Porcalla