Palace asks Senate not to politicize budget deliberations

Malacañang asked senators yesterday not to politicize their deliberations on the proposed P1.053-trillion national budget for 2006 even as it recognized the headway the chamber has achieved in scrutinizing the appropriation.

In separate statements, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye and Presidential Adviser for Political Affairs Gabriel Claudio denied the Palace was pressuring senators to pass the long-delayed budget.

Bunye and Claudio noted that the Senate, in fact, had time for budget deliberations when senators decided to convene the Committee of the Whole to scrutinize the proposed national expenditure program last year.

"This is why the executive (branch) cooperated with the Senate in its early scrutiny of the proposed 2006 General Appropriations Act," Bunye said. "We hope that politics would not play a role in the Senate’s review of the budget as approved by the House of Representatives."

Senate President Franklin Drilon earlier appealed to Malacañang not to pressure senators on the passage of the proposed 2006 budget as doing so would deprive them of their legislative right to fully scrutinize it.

Claudio said the Arroyo administration lent full support to the effort of senators to hold their own budget deliberations despite "apprehensions and questions on the political undertones and procedural correctness" of such a move by the Senate.

Palace officials earlier warned that the convening of the Committee of the Whole would only be used as a platform to attack the Arroyo administration in the guise of budget deliberations.

Lawmakers have also branded the move as "unparliamentary" since, according to rules, the Senate should wait for the House to approve the proposed budget before deliberating on it. — Paolo Romero