Lagman: SC petition unlikely to stop Maharlika Investment Fund implementation

A Supreme Court petition was unlikely to invalidate the proposed Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF), which seeks to use P500 billion in state assets for investment, opposition lawmaker Albay Representative Edcel Lagman said Friday.

“Although I am against the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) for not being seasonable as major negative economic indicators currently pummel the economy, congressional wisdom and expediency are not justiciable issues before the Supreme Court. Thus, I am dousing cold water on projected petitions to challenge the constitutionality of the MIF before the High Court once it is signed into law by President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.,” Lagman, a lawyer, added.

Lagman cited the previous High Court ruling on the following cases:

• Tañada vs. Tuvera, December 29, 1986
• Garcia vs. Executive Secretary, April 2, 2009
• Garcia vs. Drilon, June 25, 2013, and
• KMU vs. Aquino, April 2, 2019.

“In unbroken jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has held that The courts do not involve themselves with or delve into the policy or wisdom of a statute, and it is settled that courts are not concerned with the wisdom, justice, policy, or expediency of a statute,” Lagman said.

“I do not see any constitutional infirmity in the MIF to merit the Supreme Court’s exercise of judicial review, albeit it's being errant in wisdom.”

For Lagman, the remedy for the "improvident" MIF law was its amendment or repeal by the legislature, which is difficult given the composition of Congress.

Lagman insisted that the P500 billion seed funding for the MIF using state assets was better spent as budgetary support to finance the national budget's basic socio-economic services and infrastructure development rather than invest the same for contingent and lengthy ventures.

“The country does not have a revenue surplus and even has a surfeit of negative economic indicators like a huge fiscal deficit; high inflation rate; a very low human development index ranking; and poor gross domestic product (GDP) per capita,” Lagman added.

The House of Representatives adopted the Senate’s version of the MIF bill, making the bill ready for President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s signature into law at any given time.

Meanwhile, Lagman’s fellow lawyer and former Bayan Muna party-list Rep. Neri Colmenares thinks otherwise and vowed to challenge the measure before the High Court.

Colmenares cited the discrepancies and errors in the Maharlika bill were clearly due to Congress’ apparent rush in approving the bill in violation of Article 6, Section 26.2 of the Constitution which states that “No bill passed by either House shall become a law unless it has passed three readings on separate days, and printed copies thereof in its final form have been distributed to its Members three days before its passage.”

Colmenares was referring to Sections 50 and 51 which state different prescriptive periods in filing criminal cases against individuals who will be misusing the MIF (10 years and 20 years), as well as the typographical error in Article 34 of the bill concerning on secondment of government financial institutions personnel to the Maharlika Investment Corporation which will manage the fund.

“Mistakes like these do not add confidence to the viability of the Maharlika Fund and the amount of study given to the bill by the legislature," said Colmenares.

He added that the MIF bill was subjected to many amendments in the wee hours of May 31 and approved on second reading. It was again approved on the Third Reading some minutes later.

"Presuming they have a Third Reading copy of the bill, the Senators could not have even studied the bill if the amendments inserted were indeed those that they agreed upon during the Second Reading,” said Colmenares.

“On May 31 itself, the House of Representatives simply announced that they are adopting the Senate version. Surely, there would have been no time for members of the House to study the Senate bill they were ratifying when they adopted the supposed Senate version. That is not the way to pass a law, especially a law that is a threat to at least P500 Billion of public funds,” he added. — DVM, GMA Integrated News