Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo donned her economics professor's hat in soothing misplaced fears on the Maharlika Wealth Fund which by all indications will hurdle second reading at the House plenary.
The former President, who is former economics professor at the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo de Manila University, said the House is not inventing the wheel in MWF since Singapore had the Temasek Holdings since 1974, and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation that was created in 1981.
Essentially, Arroyo said the money will not be taken away from any institution but will be pooled to add leverage in pursuing huge investments that promise bigger returns than when the institutions such as the Social Security System or the Land Bank of the Philippines plunks in capital individually.
She said the government always has funds to invest.
The butt of criticism which the President will head the board of the corporation that will run MWF is the strongest layer of protection against abuse.
"Its success will lie in the quality of its management. In the current version of the MWF, the President of the Philippines chairs its Governing Board. This is a powerful statement that the highest official of the land will hold himself ultimately accountable to the Filipino people for the performance of the Fund," Arroyo said.
The President then can count on the Department of Finance and all the financial expertise of the government to shepherd the MWF.
"Historically, the Philippines has had a good track record insofar as its Finance Secretaries are concerned, so this is a valuable resource that our country can count on as available," she added.
Finance Secretary Benjamin Diokno said most of the criticisms are coming from personalities who likely have not read House bill 6398 which will create the fund.
One of the noise makers is retired Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio who said the creation of the fund is unconstitutional.
The former Supreme Court magistrate who has not come to terms with retirement may have been confused in thinking the MWF is similar to the reviled Disbursement Acceleration Program which was funded through savings, many agencies were forced to create a pork barrel for the administration of the late President Noynoy Aquino.
The patently unconstitutional slush fund was used as "incentives" for senator-judges to convict the late Supreme Court Justice Renato Corona through the Senate impeachment court in 2012.
The DAP was created through fund transfers from different government agencies which the SC had ruled in 2014 as unconstitutional.
It was created by the LP leadership primarily LP strategist, then Budget Secretary Butch Abad to extract lump sum funds from the budget.
The Palace then said the juggling of public funds was not wrong and that Noynoy was mandated to manipulate the budget.
The method of raising DAP funds that reached P200 billion circumvented the authority of Congress to allocate funds by taking pieces of the budget and repackaging these as savings and realignments for conversion into lump sum funds.
Congress is going through the rigors of having the MWF scrutinized publicly which the DAP did not have the benefit of and would have been hidden had legislators not blown the lid off it.
