Palace rebukes Alan Cayetano over claim Marcos rejected P10,000 cash aid proposal

Malacañang on Monday pushed back against Senator Alan Peter Cayetano’s claim that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. rejected his proposal to provide P10,000 in cash assistance to Filipino families.

Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said Cayetano first proposed the measure in 2021, before the Marcos administration took office in June 2022.

She questioned why the senator was blaming the President for the proposal’s failure to pass.

“Lumalabas na laging siya ang walang sala. Naninisi siya ng iba. ’Wag niyang ipahid sa ibang tao. Akuin niya mismo ang kaniyang kakulangan,” Castro said.

(It appears that he always thinks he is blameless. He keeps blaming others. He should not pin it on other people. He should take responsibility for his own shortcomings.)

Castro’s remarks came after Cayetano claimed that Marcos had rejected his proposal for a P10,000 cash assistance program.

The senator has long advocated for the measure, first filing the proposed P10K Ayuda Bill in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. He refiled the proposal after returning to the Senate in 2022, but it has yet to be enacted into law.

Castro maintained that since the proposal predated the current administration, it was inaccurate to attribute its non-passage solely to Marcos.

GMA News Online reached out to Cayetano for his comment on Malacañang's statement and will update this story once he issues a response.

In a Facebook livestream on Sunday, Cayetano said he had pushed for the cash aid because many Filipinos had yet to recover from the economic effects of the pandemic.

“So noong 2021, going into 2022, sabi ko marami pang hindi nakaka-recover, so kaya ng ating budget magbigay. Pero pagkapanalo ni President Marcos, ayaw niya,” Cayetano said.

(So, in 2021, heading into 2022, I said that many people still had not recovered, so our budget could afford to provide assistance. But after President Marcos won, he did not want it.)

“Pero every single year po tinatanong ko ’yun sa aming Chairman of Finance, 200 to 300, minsan 400 billion ang ayuda. So kaya. Kaya pong bigyan ng 10K,” he added.

(But every single year, I ask our Finance Committee chair about it. The financial assistance amounts to P200 billion to P300 billion, sometimes P400 billion. So, it can be done. It is possible to provide P10,000.)

Malacañang dismissed Cayetano’s claim as baseless.

“Bakit hindi kaya makapagpigil sa sarili si Senator Alan Cayetano sa paggawa ng intriga at mga kwentong walang basehan? Imbis na ituro ang sarili sa kanyang kapabayaan sa pagtatrabaho, magtuturo siya ng iba masagip lang ang sarili sa kahihiyan,” Castro said in a statement.

(Why can’t Senator Alan Cayetano stop himself from stirring intrigue and making baseless claims? Instead of taking responsibility for his own shortcomings in doing his job, he points fingers at others just to save himself from embarrassment.)— MCG, GMA News