Angara discourages legislative set-asides

Senator Edgardo J. Angara strongly opposed a bill that will provide 30 percent of the value of forfeited properties in corruption cases as additional funding for the office of the Ombudsman.

"We ought to rethink this legislative set-aside. Since 1987, we've been enacting legislative appropriations for agrarian reform, higher education, Philippine sports, etc. and it only leads to wasteful spending," he warned.

Angara, the father of the Ombudsman law, said that two years ago, the Marcos fund surrendered by Switzerland amounting to about $US650 was handed over to the agrarian reform and within just one year, P600M was spent and no accounting was given to us.

"We have also set aside to the higher education fund a cheque amounting to one billion, solely for higher education development. But they just used the fund for the construction of several call centers all over the country."

"That's the type of lavish spending happening in various agencies brought about by easy money, it's like winning the lottery, they don't have to work for it," he said.

"Based on the experience we've had, I don't think we should continue that process."

The proposed bill of Senator Chiz Escudero seeks to amend section 6 of RA 1379 otherwise known as the Forfeiture Law, to provide a fixed percentage of the value of the forfeited properties in corruption cases as additional funding for the office of the Ombudsman.

Angara argued that legislative set-aside is only good for certain purposes. "Why single out a particular segment of the judiciary, why not state prosecutors, why not provincial prosecutors?"

"Why would the prosecution especially the anti-graft prosecutors get a legislative automatic allocation when I suppose, the whole judiciary needs funding?"

According to him, the Office of the Ombudsman receives P954M a year. "Three years ago, we gave them about P300M in order to recruit more investigators. We are not indifferent to their needs but we must scrutinize every single request for funding," he pointed out.

"If the incentive is automatically set aside, it's already included automatically in the appropriations and we are unable to determine each and every program that receives funding. Appropriations must be requested not automatically granted," he added.

"I'm afraid this will go in the same way that it has gone in the past. We should not fall into this trap once again."