Lagman: No relief at Supreme Court if Maharlika becomes law
MANILA, Philippines — Petitions at the Supreme Court against the controversial Maharlika Investment Fund bill will not likely prosper, Rep. Edcel Lagman said Friday as the proposal awaited President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s signature.
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino "Koko" Pimentel III has called on the president to veto the bill and said Friday that the high court would be the next battleground for Marcos' pet bill if it is signed into law.
"Although I am against the Maharlika Investment Fund for not being seasonable as major negative economic indicators currently pummel the economy, congressional wisdom and expediency are not justiciable issues before the Supreme Court," Lagman—a lawyer and president of the minority Liberal Party—said.
Citing jurisprudence, Lagman said that the courts "do not involve themselves with or delve into the policy or wisdom of a statute."
He added: "The remedy against an unwise or improvident law is to seek its amendment or repeal by the legislature itself."
The bill, which Marcos certified urgent, hurdled the House and Senate with barely any opposition. At the Senate, which passed the bill past midnight on Wednesday, it was passed with just one "no" vote — that of Sen. Risa Hontiveros.
Pimentel and Hontiveros are the only members of the minority bloc at the 24-member Senate.
Funding for the P500-billion investment fund will come from the Land Bank of the Philippines, the Development Bank of the Philippines, dividends from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and share earnings from the Philippine Amusements and Gaming Corp. Critics of the measure say it is prone to corruption and that plans for the fund are unclear.
Lagman said that money that will be put in the Maharlika fund would be better used to fund socio-economic services and infrastructure development while the government has "a huge fiscal deficit; high inflation rate; a very low human development index ranking; and poor gross domestic product (GDP) per capita."
In a separate statement Friday, Pimentel called the bill "full of opaque provisions, contradictions, ambiguities, and loopholes."
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