SENATORS on Monday night rebuked Philippine Retirement Authority (PRA) general manager Cynthia Carrion for sending text messages to senators telling them to “to stop asking questions” on the proposed budget of other departments and prioritize instead the spending request of the Department of Tourism (DOT) for 2024.
The PRA is an attached agency of the DOT.
Among those who got the text messages from Carrion were Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri, Deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros and Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Pia Cayetano.
Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco apologized to the senators on behalf of Carrion, even as she said that she, too, was “shocked” at the “highly inappropriate, unacceptable and out of line actions of the head of the PRA, the recently appointed GM Cynthia Carrion.”
Frasco said he has instructed her chief of staff to look into Carrion’s action to determine the appropriate penalty to be meted on her.
She said she has likewise instructed Carrion to apologize to the senators.
It was Estrada who took to the floor to express his disgust with Carrion, saying it was unethical for her to send text messages to senators telling them to speed up the interpellations on the budget of other departments to give way to the DOT.
“Because according to that department head, she has been here since 1 o’clock (p.m. of Monday), waiting for the budget of their agency to be deliberated upon,” Estrada said.
“May I call the attention of Ms. Cynthia Carrion that we’ve been here working at 9 o’clock in the morning (Monday) waiting for all the budget of the departments to be deliberated upon. We are doing our job, and no one has the right to tell us to stop talking here. You have no right to tell us to do what to do here,” an irked Estrada said.
“Kami nga kahit matagal magtanong si Sen Risa (Even if Sen. Risa takes up much time to ask her questions), we never dared to ask her to stop asking questions. Who are you? Who are you to tell us to stop asking questions?” he added.
Estrada said it was not the first time Carrion texted Cayetano since she also supposedly sent a text message to the lady senator “regarding EJ Obiena’s performance.” He did not elaborate.
Zubiri, who said Carrion “is a friend of mine, we’re family friends,” said he was caught off-guard by the PRA chief’s text message.
Zubiri said: “If it was just me, I will let go of it. But when I heard that you were texting other members of the Senate, particularly insulting text messages to Senator Risa Hontiveros to stop asking the budget of the DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) because you want the DOT to be next in line, that is not proper, that is inappropriate. And I think, the sad part about it is she (Hontiveros) doesn’t know you from Adam.”
Zubiri said senators are only doing their job to scrutinize the proposed budgets of all offices to ensure that the people’s money will be spent properly.
He stressed any member of the Senate does not deserve the kind of text messages that Carrion sent.
Senate majority leader Joel Villanueva, who said he did not receive the text message, also expressed his “utmost disgust, dismay, and disappointment, especially coming from a fellow government official.”
Hontiveros thanked her colleagues for taking action on Carrion’s behavior.
“Higit sa lahat tungkol ito sa respeto kasi hindi po tayo gumagamit ng sense of entitlement. Ginagawa lang naming dito sa Senado ang aming tungkulin, ang aming mandato (Most of all, this is about respect because we do not use our sense of entitlement. We are just doing our job, our mandate),” Hontiveros said.
She likewise thanked Frasco and other DOT officials for meeting her outside the plenary to apologize.
“I heard the apology of the person concerned but I think moving forward, words must be followed by action — pagwawasto sa ginawa niya hindi lang sa ilang indibidwal natin pero sa buong institusyon natin (correct the wrong she did to certain individuals and to the whole institution). So, I hope things can be set right in the next days, hindi lang sa Senado, pati sa publiko na sumusubaybay sa trabaho naming over the past two weeks (not only in the Senate but to the public who have been monitoring our work here for the past two weeks),” she said.
Frasco said that prior to Carrion’s inappropriate text messages, the PRA chief likewise “approached me and demanded that we be placed first as far as the schedule of the deliberations of the budget, to which I immediately replied to her to say that we cannot do that because the Senate is an independent body.”
Despite her statement, Frasco said Carrion still sent the text messages to the senators.
She said it was Sen. Nancy Binay, chairperson of the Committee on Tourism, who informed her of Carrion’s behavior.
“I demanded that she issue an immediate and (issue a) personal apology to all of the senators, including the good SP (Senate President), for having acted at the height of impropriety and also to make very clear that she acted on her own and without the imprimatur of the DOT,” she added.
DENR CHIEF TRIPS
During Monday night’s deliberations on the proposed DENR budget for next year, Sen. Raffy Tulfo questioned the frequent foreign trips of Environment Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga, which he said was at 13 to 14 times since she was appointed to the post in July 2022.
He asked Loyzaga to justify her foreign travels.
Tulfo noted that the Office of the Secretary has an allotment of P1.1 billion in 2023, and a proposed P1.73 billion appropriation for next year.
Sen. Cynthia Villar, who defended the DENR budget, said some of Loyzaga’s trips were personal.
After consulting with Loyzaga, Villar said the trips abroad included the United Nations Asia Pacific Ministerial Conference for Disaster Risk Reduction, UN Framework on Climate Change, UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, UN Water Conference-Sustainable Development in New York, and the UN High-Level Meeting on the Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework.
She added Loyzaga also went to Washington D.C. and Japan for official functions, and to Abu Dhabi for a pre-conference for the UN Framework on Climate Change.
She also said Loyzaga is set to attend an event in Dubai sometime this year.
Tulfo then asked what benefits the DENR got from the foreign travels.
“For the information of the good senator, this is the first time in history that we have a DENR secretary who travels abroad every month. People in the DENR have been complaining that their secretary is not visible unlike the other secretaries who go to the ground to talk to them and conduct inspections,” Tulfo said in Filipino.
Villar explained that Loyzaga was required to travel abroad to attend ministerial level conferences.
“She has to go, and she has the approval of the President, because there are conferences which require the head of office to be present and there are times that she is allowed to send her representative. So, she really has to attend some of those conferences because it is ministerial, she has to represent the Philippines,” Villar said in mixed Filipino and English.
Villar said the DENR was able to get financial and technical support for its environment projects from the foreign trips.
Tulfo then advised Loyzaga to better delegate the travels to officials of the agency so she can focus more on her job in the country.
INTERPELLATION CLOSED
The Senate on early Tuesday ended the plenary debates on the proposed P5.768 trillion national budget for 2024 after nine days of marathon hearings. Senators started with the budget floor debates last November 8.
The plenary debates ended at around 4:50 a.m. Tuesday.
Among the highlights of the plenary deliberations were the announcement of Vice President Sara Duterte that the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education will no longer pursue its request for P650 million in confidential funds (P500 million for the OVP and P150 million for DepEd).
Other agencies which also dropped their confidential fund requests were the Department of Finance (DOF) and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), while the secret funds of the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice (DOJ) were reduced.
Senators realigned the P300 million confidential funds of the DICT to its regular line-item budget to allow the Commission on Audit (COA) to scrutinize how the allocation will be spent.
Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, chairperson of the Committee on Finance chairman, will begin introducing the committee amendments to the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) today. Once all senators have proposed their amendments, the 2024 GAB will then be approved on second and third readings.
The Senate can pass the proposed budget measure on second and third reading on the same day since it has been certified as urgent by President Marcos.
Once the Senate approves the proposed bill, senators will meet with their counterparts at the House of Representatives at a bicameral conference to iron out the disagreeing provisions of the proposed measure.
Once the unified version of budget measure is ratified by the two chambers, it will be transmitted to Malacañang for the approval and signing of the President.
