Andaya insists senators afraid of publicizing ‘pork’ allotments

MANILA, Philippines — Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. has repeatedly asked why senators are “so afraid” to itemize their billions of pesos worth of pork barrel allocations if they are really clean, unlike congressmen who have been unfairly vilified for alleged corruption.

“I do not know why the senators are so afraid of making public their individual realignments,” Andaya, chairman of the appropriations committee of the House of Representatives, said in bewilderment.

“From the start, the House (contingent) maintained its position that all meetings of the Bicameral Conference Committee be open to the public. We even invited the media to cover our proceedings,” he added, recalling when they opened the traditionally confidential deliberations.

The Bicolano lawmaker believes that as responsible officials tasked with budget authorization, they must all be ready to defend their positions and decisions.

“Wala naman tayong dapat itago sa publiko (We shouldn’t have anything to hide from the public),” Andaya said.

“Our people demand full transparency and accountability in the national budget. Let them know the full details of the 2019 General Appropriations Bill, which we transmitted for signature of the President. The Senate must stop its striptease act now,” he added.

According to Andaya, he was forced to make full disclosure of the budget cuts and their realignments “after the senators refused to come out clean on the issue.”

“The taxpaying public cannot be kept in the dark as far as government expenditures are concerned,” the former budget secretary said.

“They need to know where their taxes go. I have repeatedly asked the senators to give us full details of their realignments in the 2019 national budget. They kept us in the dark in the bicameral meetings, informal meetings and even in our meeting with the President,” he added.

Retirement legacy

After spending 27 years in public service, Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo just wants to bow out of government service with merely one distinction: that of restoring the country’s fiscal stability at the height of a global meltdown in 2008.

“I’d like to think that my legacy will center around restoring our country’s fiscal stability after a storm on financial crisis here and abroad,” Arroyo told family and friends who attended her 72nd birthday in Lubao, Pampanga on Friday.

“The restoration of fiscal stability was the platform for my program that built more and better infrastructures, and that reduced our poverty from 39 percent when I assumed the presidency to 26 percent when I left the presidency,” she added.

The reduced poverty level, along with the stable economy, were among the positive economic gains in her administration’s fiscal management, where the succeeding administration of Benigno Aquino III had the luxury of not having to raise taxes for six years.

Pilloried virulently for alleged massive corruption in her administration, Arroyo admitted that she cannot force history to judge her the way she wants it.

“In my case, unfortunately, I don’t think I will have as dramatic a legacy as those giants of world history,” she said, citing the cases of Winston Churchill of Britain and the famous slain US president John F. Kennedy, who is “remembered for something as ephemeral as Camelot, the sense and style that the torch has been passed to a new generation of his countrymen.”