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Enrile to oppose withholding of money allotted for vacancies

By Jonathan de Santos

SENATE President Juan Ponce Enrile vowed Wednesday to oppose government moves to impound money meant for unfilled positions saying it may violate the autonomy given to Constitutional bodies.
“As far as I’m concerned, I will resist this. Nothing personal but it’s my duty as head of the Senate to resist this system,” he said.
Enrile said the Miscellaneous Personal Benefit Fund (MPBF), which the Budget department will hold in trust for government agencies until they fill each of close to 67,000 vacant positions in the bureaucracy, deprives the judiciary of funds guranteed by the Constitution.
“I don’t care whether I will have to be kicked out from my position,” Enrile, a lawyer, said.
The Supreme Court, the Audit commission, Commission on Elections, Civil Service Commission, and other bodies created by the 1987 Constitution believe this provision in the proposed General Appropriations bill for 2012 violates their fiscal autonomy.
Under Article VIII of the 1987 Constitution, appropriations to the judiciary “after approval, shall be automatically and regularly released.”
Supreme Court Administrator Midas Marquez told reporters that the MPBF violated the judiciary’s fiscal autonomy by requiring appointment papers before around P2 billion meant for unfilled positions is released.
He added putting money in the MPBF effectively cut funding to the judiciary to P13.396 billion in 2012 from P14.2 billion this year.
Under the Constitution, the principle of fiscal autonomy prohibits appropriations lower than the previous year.
Marquez said, however, that there is little that the Supreme Court can do since the proposed budget for 2012 is still being debated in Congress.
“We can’t do anything at this time because the mandate is with Congress,” he told reporters.
Senator Franklin Drilon, chairman of the Senate finance committee, said the proposed budget for the judiciary is actually higher than P13.396 billion.
He said the MPBF has around P2 billion for new judges and court employees, and the judiciary also stands to receive P2.113 billion under the Judicial Development Fund and the Special Allowance for Judges.
In August, Drilon said that the MPBF, a new budget item, was meant to curb the conversion of unpaid salaries for other purposes.
He said that the Budget department believe the MPBF “is not unconstitutional because, according to them, this is part of the judiciary budget, automatically released to the agencies concerned.”
He added that one way for Constitutional bodies to resolve the issue of the MPBF is to fill their vacancies. “This will be automatically funded then there is no more issue on MPBF,” he said.
He said that vacancies in the judiciary have become a matter of “serious concern” since the judiciary has 550 vacant courts, around a fourth of all judicial positions. “Some of these have been vacant for years,” he said.
Marquez said the vacancies remain unfilled because of a lack of qualified applicants. He said that some applicants to the judiciary took the bar exams four or five times before passing.
He said that this has affected the rate that the country’s courts have been able to dispose of cases. Drilon said that of 1.012 million cases at courts in the Philippines, only 380, 490–or 37.5 percent–have been disposed of.
The Sandiganbayan anti-graft court has the lowest clearance rate of all, the senator said, with a disposal rate of little more than three percent.
He said that although the Senate cannot impose deadlines on the court, the Supreme Court, which has authority over all courts, agreed the disposition rate “needs improvement.”
The Supreme Court has agreed to meet en banc to discuss the vacancies. (Sunnex)

Source: http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/local-news/2011/09/14/enrile-oppose-withholding-money-allotted-vacancies-179356

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