Cong. Pulong Duterte got P51-B budget in three years

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – It was his own statement about having his district budget reduced this year that got House members to probe and discover that Davao City First District Representative Paolo ‘Pulong’ Duterte, son of former President Rodrigo Duterte, had received P51 billion in the past years.

Duterte earlier posted on his social media accounts last January 9 that his P2-billion district budget had been reduced from P2-billion down to P500 million, which he attributed to his opposition to the House’s current push for charter change.

This prompted House Appropriations Committee chair, Elizalde Co of Ako Bicol Party-list, to check the records on the allocation for Davao City’s first district, and he was surprised with the large amount allocated for Duterte’s district.

“Unprecedented. Sobra-sobra (It’s too much), especially for a developed (city),” Co said in a television interview.

Co said the committee reduced Davao’s first district budget back to its old allocation, which is P1 billion. 

He added that his committee is probing records of how such huge money was spent and is heeding calls from other legislators for an equitable distribution of district budgets to poorer districts.

District representatives get an annual budget from the national budget for projects for their district, which usually include infrastructure development and soft projects including medical assistance for constituents. Senators also get an allocation as well for their projects.

How it got to P51-B

The House has discovered from the records of the National Expenditure Program (NEP) that from 2020-2022, the budget allocation for Davao City’s first district was around P24.3 billion.

But Duterte’s final budget for 2020 tripled from P4.670 billion to P13,745,650 billion. In 2021, the allocation ballooned from P9.670 billion to P25 billion. In 2022, his budget was slightly increased from P10 billion to 13 billion. His district got a total of P51.829 billion.

Co said that in the history of the Philippine Congress, Pulong Duterte had received the biggest allocation for a district budget.

The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) confirmed that these allocations were set aside for infrastructure projects in the district.

In Davao City’s first district, one would notice there were many road and drainage repairs that took place since 2021.

Co denied accusations from Duterte that he is being ganged up by fellow representatives, saying that it is time to redistribute the budget.

“How are we deducting his budget when he received P51 billion in three years?”

The appropriations chair added that the DPWH had wanted to scale down the allocation for Davao City’s district and allocate this to other districts especially from third to fourth-class municipalities that had their district budgets reduced for the past years when Duterte had his big share of the budget.

Co also questioned how the P51 billion was spent.

“Kung titignan dapat sana wala na pong baha sa distrito ng Davao City and we really want to know din later on siguro bakit sa P51 billion meron, pa ring baha sa Davao City,” he said.

(If you look at it, there shouldn’t be floods in Davao City districts, and we really want to know about that later on, why there’s P51 billion yet floods still persist in Davao City.)

Duterte has not responded to requests from the media for interviews. 

Lack of transparency

The group iLead (Institute for Leadership, Empowerment and Democracy) has been monitoring the national budget and notes some of the first district projects include P23 billion for an island connector project and P15.4 billion for locally funded projects under the DPWH.

In a podcast in Facts First, iLead executive director Zy-Za Suzara notes there is a lack of transparency during budget deliberations in Congress that leads to district representatives getting bigger budgets.

“There will be insertions during budget deliberations which the public would not know. This is different from projects under DPWH which follow certain standards (and vetting). But in this case, congressmen will just list down and insert things into line items. In a sense, this is discretionary for legislators. But how do you know if this is what their community needs? Has there been an assessment” Suzara said. (davaotoday.com)