Benjamin Diokno to attend House probe on budget

MANILA, Philippines — Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno will attend today’s House of Representatives appropriations committee hearing on the allegedly anomalous budget allocation practices of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM).

The House has subpoenaed the DBM chief to this morning’s hearing. He has sent word he would show up.

The subpoena, signed by Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and committee chairman Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr., states that “failure to comply with this order is subject to penalty under the law.”

Ignoring summons usually results in contempt citation or even arrest.

Diokno was asked to bring with him “records of savings and utilization” for 2017 and 2018.

The budget chief has repeatedly said his Malacañang bosses have advised him not to participate in the inquiry.

However, in a letter Andaya read at the start of Wednesday’s hearing, Diokno indicated that he would show up if there was a “direct order” from the House.

He explained in his letter his failure to respond to previous invitations to committee hearings.

“I wish to clarify that I was not able to accede to your invitations (without a direct order to appear) in view of prior scheduled commitments that can no longer be postponed,” he said.

Malacañang said it would be up to Diokno to decide whether to attend the budget probe. “That’s his call,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said at a press briefing.

“What I know, his (Diokno) stand is ‘I’ve already testified, they asked me, I’ve already explained to them, there is nothing more to explain,’” he added.

Panelo stressed President Duterte did not give Diokno any advice on how to handle the matter.

Appropriations committee members said the subpoena is the “direct order” that Diokno should be referring to.

Diokno said he did not intend “to disrespect the House of Representatives or any of its committees.”

“On the contrary, my appearance during the question hour last Dec. 11, 2018 showed my utmost respect to the institution, wherein I sufficiently answered all the issues and concerns then raised by members of the House,” he said.

Subpoenaed with Diokno are several officials, including DBM chief of staff Undersecretary Amenah Pangandaman, Department of Public Works and Highways Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral, DPWH programming head Milagros Manaysay and Anti-Money Laundering Council executive director Mel George Racela.

Manaysay was directed to bring with her the list of projects supporting the P75 billion the DBM added to the DPWH budget for this year and the flash drive containing such list.

Attendance confirmed

A DBM statement said Diokno and Pangandaman will attend today’s hearing.

“We take any subpoena from the House as an opportunity to clarify all these matters not only to the public, but also for the official records of House,” the DBM statement read.

Summonses were also issued to DPWH personnel who uploaded the list in the DBM system in the early morning hours of July 13, 2018, and CT Leoncio Construction owner Consolacion Leoncio and her liaison officer Francis Clemente.

Leoncio is the joint venture partner of Aremar Construction in some DPWH projects in Sorsogon. Diokno’s in-laws own Aremar.

At Wednesday’s hearing, DPWH computer programmers claimed that it was Pangandaman who asked them to encode the list of P75 billion worth of projects in the DBM system.

“The picture is getting clearer. The list of projects for the P75 billion came from DBM and not from DPWH. It was Undersecretary Pangandaman who gave the orders for DPWH technical experts to reformat the new projects to fit the DBM template,” Andaya said.

He said he found it irregular that DPWH technical expert Glen Degal “was getting direct instructions from Pangandaman regarding the P75-billion insertion.”

He said Degal did not notify his DPWH bosses about the DBM official’s instructions.

The House leader noted Public Works Secretary Mark Villar’s repeated claims that he did not know about his agency’s funding augmentation.

Diokno and Panelo disputed the assertion of Villar, saying the latter was present at the Cabinet meeting that approved the adjusted DPWH budget from P480 billion to P555 billion.

Villar himself has not said much about the controversy.

Minority Leader Danilo Suarez said he found it suspicious that DPWH encoders were asked to go to the DBM office “at 4 in the morning of July 13” to upload the list of projects supporting the P75-billion addition to the DPWH budget.

“This means that this was pre-arranged and the encoding was so urgent that they had to do it in the early morning hours,” he said.    

In its statement, the DBM belied Andaya’s allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the department. “These accusations are without basis and are meant to discredit the good reputation of this administration’s DBM as one of the most transparent and credible institutions in the world,” the agency said.

“For the record, on July 9, 2018, a Cabinet meeting was held where the President approved the budget, including the P555-billion allocation for DPWH. Following the President’s approval, printing of the National Expenditure Program commenced on July 10, 2018,” the DBM said. – With Mary Grace Padin, Alexis Romero