Villafuerte's ‘pork insertions’ illegal, were made post-bicam –Leachon

Oriental Mindoro Representative Paulino Salvador Leachon on Tuesday insisted that the supposed P6-billion pork barrel insertions made Deputy Speaker Luis Raymund Villafuerte were illegal as they were made after the bicameral conference committee deliberations on the 2020 national budget.

In an interview with reporters, Leachon maintained that the said insertions were anomalous, considering that the bulk of it was used to construct the provincial capitol and a convention center in Camarines Sur, Villafuerte's home province, which Congress should have no concern over.

"Anong pakialam naman ng Congress doon sa provincial capitol ng Camarines Sur, tapos meron ka pang convention center almost about P800 million? Totally your district budget exceeding its limits," he said.

"I say illegal because that was done after the bicam. Yun nga ang ikinagagalaiti ni Senator [Panfilo] Lacson eh," he added.

Leachon said it was only a matter of time before other members of Congress and the public learned of the alleged scheme.

This may also have been the reason why Davao City Representative Isidro Ungab was removed as chair of the House Committee on Appropriations, he added.

HRET

Leachon himself was axed as chair of the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal, which Villafuerte said was due to the former's "impropriety" after the House leadership learned that there was a pending electoral protest against him before the body.

“It turns out that he (Leachon) had conned the Speaker (Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano) because he had asked him to be a member of HRET during last year’s organization of the House committees without telling him about the pending electoral protest against him,” Villafuerte said.

“Rep. Leachon seems shorn of any moral compass, because if he actually had one, he wouldn’t have had the gall to trick the Speaker by asking him to be named to the HRET last year despite the clear conflict of interest in his case," he added.

But Leachon said the House leadership knew early on that he had a pending case before the body, and he was still allowed to chair the HRET.

"Actually nung na-appoint naman ako, hindi ko rin alam. Two days after, nalaman ko, sinabi ko naman kay Speaker. Sabi nila, 'You can inhibit.' In fact, sa kanila naman nangyari yung idea," he said.

If his alleged impropriety had really cost him the chairmanship, Leachon said he should have long been removed from the position.

In response to Leachon's claim, Villafuerte pointed out that President Rodrigo Duterte did not use his line item veto powers when he signed the 2020 General Appropriations Act (GAA), which meant that there was nothing irregular with the budget including the outlay for Camarines Sur's provincial capitol complex.

"The only way to accept Rep. Leachon's logic is that the CamSur project in question is an unwarranted congressional insertion just because I had pushed for this GAA allocation in my home province," he argued.

"This means all projects proposed by our peers in their respective districts or home provinces are congressional insertions, too, and ergo, are pork." — DVM, GMA News