Andaya says Diokno should answer alleged anomalies on P75b insertions in 2019 budget

December 20, 2018

Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and other House leaders did not request for Road Board projects or call for the release of its funds, said Majority Leader and Camarines Sur Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. Thursday.

Andaya said Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno should stop peddling  “fake news” aimed at diverting the reported budget anomalies.

Andaya said Diokno should answer the supposed anomalies concerning the P75 billion insertions he made in the proposed 2019 P3.757-trillion national budget that allegedly benefitted his in-laws in Sorsogon.

“The fake news being peddled must stop. No request nor projects for the district of either Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo or Majority Leader Rolando G. Andaya Jr.,” said the document allegedly from the Road Board released to House reporters by Andaya containing the list of Road Board approved and ready for release allocations per engineering/legislative district.

"I don't talk to him (Diokno).  I don't have any right to follow anything up with him because I did not ask him for anything," said Andaya.

The Andaya panel will begin its inquiry on the alleged budget controversies and questionable allocations by Diokno on January 3, 2019 in Naga City.

Diokno claimed Andaya and other lawmakers, including Minority Leader and Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez have been pressuring him to release the Road Board funds with the forthcoming elections.

In the document, Suarez has no approved projects.

In the document released by Andaya, some lawmakers who allegedly requested projects for the Road Board include former Majority Leader Rodolfo Fariñas, Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta (PBA) partylist Reps. Jericho Nograles and Mark Aeron  Sambar, Kabayan party-list Rep. Ron Salo, ANAC/IP party-list Rep. Jose T. Panganiban, Isabela Rep. Napoleon Dy, Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales, Jr., MATA party-list Rep. Tricia Nicole Q. Velasco-Catera, Batangas Rep. Ma. Theresa V. Collantes, Cavite Rep. Strike Revilla, Cavite Rep. Abraham Tolentino, Camarines Sur Rep. Salvio Fortuno, and others.

“My district has not received any Road Board Fund under the present Administration, even when I was the Majority Leader. As I said, it was (former) Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and I who initiated its abolition,” Fariñas told reporters in a Viber group.

Nograles said this his is first time to see this list. DMS