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CONTINUITY OR CHANGE

Public fund misuse, P11-T debt among items to consider during Eleksyon 2022 –Lacson


For Senator Panfilo Lacson, the “misuse and abuse” of public funds, while the national government’s debt continues to rise, should make Filipinos wonder if they want continuity of the present administration or a change.

Lacson, in a text message to GMA News Online, said the worst is yet to come in terms of the national debt as he projected at least P13-trillion debt that the Duterte administration will leave after it ends in 2022.

“As the old rock song goes - You ain’t seen nothing yet… That being said, the worse is yet to come as far as the bludgeoning national debt is concerned. We ended 2020 with P9 [trillion] and midway in 2021, we are already hitting more than P11 [trillion]. If we follow this trajectory this administration will leave its successor with at least P13 [trillion] debt to grapple with,” Lacson said.

The lawmaker then slammed the “squandering” of funds, citing anomalies in various government agencies which the Senate had previously investigated such as the alleged corruption in the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation and the Department of Agriculture.

“Thinking in terms of Economics 101, we borrow in order to invest, or to address extreme emergency financial needs like the pandemic, but not to squander due to misuse and abuse in our spending using public monies, and worse, sourced from borrowings,” Lacson said.

“Hearing talks and seeing documents pointing to wastage of public funds in several Senate inquiries that we conducted - from the Philhealth mess involving its implementation of the Interim Reimbursement Mechanism (IRM) and procurement of IT equipment, to the DA’s pork importation and many other cases of anomalies involving tens if not hundreds of billions of pesos- make us wonder if we still want continuity of the present administration or change for a change,” he added.

Lacson made the remark when asked for comment on the Bureau of Treasury’s statement, announcing that the national government’s outstanding debt stood at P11,071,130,000,000 as of the end-May 2021.

In a statement in June, Lacson mentioned that the swelling national debt is one of the “major problems” that the next Philippine president should address.

Apart from this, the next president will have to face the territorial claims in the West Philippine Sea, P9.6-trillion seed money to be raised for the pensions of military and other uniformed personnel (MUPs), and a yearly budget of at least P1 trillion for the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) as a result of the Supreme Court ruling on the Mandanas petition to take effect next year.

Lacson is one of the names being floated as possible presidential bets in the upcoming 2022 national and local elections.

Earlier, Senate President Vicente Sotto III said he will be Lacson’s running mate if the latter decides to seek the country’s highest elected post.

Lacson confirmed this, saying it is already “cast in stone” that Sotto will be his running mate if he will run for the presidency.

But Lacson maintained that he is still “processing very carefully” if he will seek the post. — DVM, GMA News

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