MANILA -- Unless President Rodrigo Duterte calls for a special session, it would now be “physically impossible” for the Senate to pass the proposed 2019 national budget on second and third reading, Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri said Tuesday.
In an interview, Zubiri said this is due to the joint session scheduled Wednesday morning at the House of Representatives for the extension of martial law in Mindanao.
“Pero di namin kasalanan ito, dahil nagkaroon ng martial law extension. Kung wala, tapos na sana kami tomorrow (Wednesday), then plano namin second and third reading on Thursday (This is not our fault, if not for martial law extension, we would have been finished by tomorrow and have the second and third reading on Thursday),” he said.
As it were, he said the Senate could not resume budget deliberations until the joint session is adjourned.
“Ang problema ang House kung marami silang explanation of votes… sa Minority bloc lang 30 na yan. Kung lahat sila magbibigay ng explanation of votes na three minutes (each), mae-extend na yan (The problem is if many House members would explain their votes… the Minority bloc alone has at least 30 members. If every one of them would explain their votes at three minutes each, the session would be unduly extended),” he noted.
"Technically, we lose the whole day to discuss the budget,” Zubiri said.
Due to this, he said the Senate can now, at best, only finish the budget up to the period of interpellation by Thursday.
“We will work on Thursday, we will do our best to finish the budget at least to end interpellation, but mukhang hanggang dun na lang (it seems that's it),” the Senate Majority Leader said.
“So, unless there is special session called, technically we end on Thursday. We are trying our best, but physically, it’s quite impossible to pass it on second and third reading,” Zubiri said.
Zubiri said the Senate can only pass the 2019 national budget on third and final reading when Congress resumes sessions on Jan. 14, 2019.
He said the Senate and the House could ratify the budget bill by January 16 and have it signed by the President before January 30.
With a reenacted budget now a distinct possibility, Zubiri said the Senate is ready to introduce a special provision to amend the Omnibus Election Code to exempt the 2019 capital outlay projects from the election ban.
“We want to put a special provision in the budget that will amend the Election Code for this coming 2019. All the projects that have to be implemented under capital outlay will be exempted from election ban,” he said.
He said this would ensure that projects under the "Build, Build, Build" program would not be affected by the election ban that would be imposed sometime in the first weeks of February next year.
“Yan na ang solution kasi sinabi nila baka mag-contract ang GDP [gross domestic product] pag walang budget and hindi ma-implement ang "Build, Build, Build" (That’s the solution because they said that the GDP would contract if there is no budget and the "Build, Build, Build" would not be implemented.) Which is true because no project will be implemented, no jobs on the building of roads, bridges,” he said.
"Ayaw namin 'yun kaya gagawa kami ng special provision para ma-exempt 'yun, para tuluy-tuloy pa rin 'yung bidding ng projects even during the election period (We don’t want that to happen, so we are going to introduce a special provision to exempt the projects so that the bidding would continue even during the election period),” Zubiri said. (PNA)
