SENATE President Francis Escudero wants to introduce a provision in the General Appropriations Act of 2025 that will ban the inclusion of the names or photos of elected and appointed officials in government-funded projects.
Escudero said he has directed his lawyers to study if his proposal is legal, underscoring that projects funded by taxpayers’ money should not be credited to any elected or appointed government official.
“Isa sa mga pinapa-aral ko na sa mga abogado kung maaari bang ilagay na lamang ‘yan sa isang special provision sa General Appropriations Act para sa gayon lahat ng gastusin ng pamahalaan gamit ang public funds ay hindi puwedeng lagyan ng pangalan o mukha ng sinumang opisyal, elected man o appointed (I already asked my legal team to study if we can introduce a special provision in the General Appropriations Act so that all government-funded projects will not bear the name or picture of elected or appointed officials),” Escudero told a recent radio interview.
“Maraming special provisions ‘yung budget sa kada item. Meron din tayong tinatawag na general provisions. Itong mga general provisions na ito ay nag-a-apply sa lahat ng gastusin ng pamahalaan, mapa-capital outlay, MOOE, o PS (There are many special provisions per item in the budget [bill]. We have what we call the general provisions which apply to all government spendings, including capital outlay, maintenance and other operating expenses, or personnel services),” he said.
The Senate leader said he came up with the idea amid the uproar over the P10 million appropriation of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for the printing and distribution of the children’s book “Isang Kaibigan,” which is authored by Vice President Sara Duterte.
Lawmakers have noted the large photo of the Vice President on the “About the author” page of the book.
Escudero said adding the provision in the GAA is easier than introducing a measure for the same intent.
He recalled that he was one of the co-authors of the proposed “Anti-Epal” bill, which was principally authored by the late Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago in 2014. The proposal did not make it past the committee level.
Escudero said reviving the measure will take some time to pass while introducing the special provision in the GAA will be easier to implement.
This is not the first time that the Senate chief’s proposal is made in the chamber.
Sen. Grace Poe introduced a similar provision in the 2021 national budget.
The “anti-epal” provision was adopted as General Provision No. 82 of the 2021 budget, which prohibits the attachment of names, visages, appearances, logos, signatures, or other analogous images of any public official, whether elected or appointed, on all programs, activities, projects or corresponding signage which are funded under the GAA.
The same provision was incorporated in the 2018 national budget.
‘NO HAND’
Education Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara told lawmakers that the Department of Education (DepEd) did not pay for the illustrators of Duterte’s children’s book when the Vice President was still the education secretary.
Angara, during the hearing of the House Committee on Appropriation on DepEd’s P793 billion budget request for next year, said there were no records of payments to the book’s illustrators.
The DepEd’s proposed budget for 2025 is higher than this year’s P762 billion and the P699.6 billion in 2023.
Angara surmised the illustrators, who are job order employees of the department’s Public Affairs Service, may have either worked “for free” or were just paid “on the side.”
On the questioning of Rep. Ramon Rodrigo Gutierrez (PL, 1-Rider), Undersecretary Gina Gonong told the budget hearing that the department only knew about the Vice President’s book when she read it to school children during the “Araw ng Pagbasa” on November 21 last year.
Gonong said the reading ambassadors are the ones who choose the book that they want to read to students during the annual event “as long as the book is appropriate to the level of the learners.”
“Sometimes there are famous people, officials of DepEd, who read before children in schools. And they can choose the storybook that they’re going to read. So, in this Araw ng Pagbasa in a Quezon City school, the VP picked her own story,” she said.
Duterte’s book tells the story of how a parrot, along with other bird friends, helped an owl build a new nest after losing it in a storm.
The Vice President last month engaged in a heated exchange with Sen. Risa Hontiveros during the budget hearings after the Vice President accused the senator of “politicizing” the Senate’s deliberations on the OVP’s proposed P2.037 billion budget for 2025.
She made the allegation after Hontiveros asked what her children’s book was all about, adding that government funds should not be used to further the Vice President’s personal interests.
The OVP wants a P10 million allocation for the printing and distribution of the book, but Hontiveros has vowed to move for the realignment of the amount to other items in the proposed 2025 budget.
Rep. France Castro (PL, ACT), a member of the militant Makabayan bloc, has said that it is obvious that the book is a propaganda material of the Vice President, pointing to the large photo of the Vice President on its last page. She said books usually only have small photos of authors on the back cover.
DEPED CONFI FUNDS
Also during the House budget hearing, the DepEd could not explain how Duterte used the department’s P112.5 million confidential funds in 2023.
Undersecretary for Finance Annalyn Sevilla said she could not say how the funds were used “because we’re not part of the process of its utilization and liquidation.”
“What I can share is, from the (DepEd’s) finance (unit), we have released three quarters.
That’s P112.5 million. It has been recorded as liquidated because we were given a copy of the cover letter only of the liquidation,” Sevilla told the panel chaired by Rep. Zaldy Co (PL, Ako Bicol) on the questioning of Rep. Raoul Manuel (PL, Kabataan), also a member of the Makabayan bloc.
Sevilla said the DepEd followed the Commission on Audit’s Joint Circular governing the release of confidential funds in the form of cash advances.
“There is a three-month requirement; that it (the confidential fund) should be released on a quarterly basis. The next is liquidation, which should be upon the head of the agency to the Commission on Audit,” she said.
Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo, senior vice chair of the appropriations panel, said that while the DepEd under Duterte spent its P112.5 million confidential funds in 190 days in 2023, its regular funds languished, jeopardizing Filipino learners’ future.
She cited the COA’s 2023 report which revealed that DepEd failed to utilize over P37 billion, or 5.13 percent, of its total adjusted allotments of P735.39 billion.
“So ang efficiency pagdating sa spending ng confidential funds ay 143 percent.
Congratulations po, pero pagdating sa regular funds, napakabagal po (So the efficiency rate when it comes to confidential funds is 143 percent. Congratulations, but when it comes to regular funds, it’s so slow,” she said.
Quimbo said the low utilization rate, particularly of projects like the DCP, aggravates the crisis in Philippine education and puts Filipinos at a disadvantage of competing for global jobs.
“In a world that is flat, they have to compete globally. Kung kulelat tayo, hirap tayo. Hirap silang mag compete, ‘yun ang kinakaharap ng ating Kalihim, ng buong Kagawaran, kaya kelangan natin tulungan ang DepEd (If we’re at the bottom, it’ll be hard. It’ll be hard for them to compete, that’s what our secretary, the whole department, is facing that’s why we have to help DepEd),” she said.
“May crisis (There’s a crisis). We cannot waste funds, we cannot waste time. Those are the two things. Pero pag dating sa COA reports, isa sa pinakamalaking findings ng COA report in 2023, ay low utilization. Ibig sabihin mabagal ang paggastos at may natitirang pondo, so wasted funds, wasted time (However, when it comes to COA reports, one of the biggest findings is low utilization. Meaning, spending the remaining funds was too slow. So wasted funds, wasted time),” Quimbo added.
Angara told Manuel that the DepEd is no longer requesting for confidential funds under the 2025 national budget, especially since his predecessor stopped asking for the fund when Congress was deliberating on last year’s national budget in 2023.
“It has been controversial,” he said. “Mabuti na rin umiwas, your honor, at hingin na po ‘yun sa line-item kung may mga pangangailangan po ang departamento (It’s better to just avoid it, your honor, and ask for a line-item if the department will have such a need for it).” — With Wendell Vigilia
