Angara earns praises for change of mind over BDP funding

SENATE Finance Committee chair, Sen. Edgardo ‘Sonny’ Angara, may no longer be blamed by his colleagues seeking re-election next year for their impending defeat after having a change of heart and expressed his support for the restoration of the 2022 budget of the ‘Barangay Development Program’ (BDP).

Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) secretary, Eduardo M. Año, in a statement, said he welcomes Angara’s change of mind in reinstating the proposed P28.1 billion for the BDP next year, after earlier slashing it down to a meager P4.11 billion, on the prodding of the Liberal Party and other groups politically-allied with the Communist Party of the Philippines.

“As we enter the 2021 Bicameral Conference Committee deliberations, we thank Senator Angara and Senator Dela Rosa for seeing the value of the program which will bring lasting peace and development to communities that have been left behind economically due to communist presence in their areas,” Año said.

The restoration of the BDP budget has become a key thorn in the BiCam deliberations that started last week, right after the Senate approved the proposed P5.024 national budget for 2022 last December 1, 2021, with only the Senate contingent, under Angara, being recalcitrant on the issue.

The House contingent, headed by Appropriations Committee chair, Rep. Eric Go Yap and Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, are in full support of the BDP budget.

President Duterte, in a speech in Zamboanga City on December 3, 2021, criticized the Senate for cutting the BDP budget and backed the call by various sectors for a ‘zero-vote’ next year against senators who agreed to scale down the BDP budget (see also Pinoy Exposé Volume 2, Issue No. 47).

He also called on the Senate to restore the BDP budget.

The BDP is a key component of the government’s anti-terrorism campaign primarily directed against the CPP, its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA) its various front organizations under the National Democratic Front (NDF).

Although the program falls under the ambit of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the fund and projects are directly downloaded to the beneficiary-communities, which are formerly strongholds of the terrorist groups. Majority of these barangays are situated in the most far-flung and geographically-isolated areas of the country.

This year, 822 former CPP-NPA strongholds became beneficiaries of the BDP and its success has convinced the remaining CPP-NPA holdouts in the countryside to return to the fold of the law.

Government records disclosed that already, more than 20,000 former leaders, cadres, fighters and supporters of the CPP-NPA-NDF had returned to the law and casted away their allegiance to the terrorist groups under Pres. Duterte’s administration.

Año noted that for next year, the proposed P28.1 billion BDP budget would directly benefit an additional 1,406 barangays in 324 municipalities, 29 cities, and 58 provinces in 15 regions nationwide.

With millions of poor Filipinos directly benefiting from the BDP, the call for junking the candidacies of senators supporting the CPP narrative is very much real come election time next year. The junking of these lawmakers is also supported by the League of Governors of the Philippines.

Sounding very diplomatic, the DILG chief said he has “always believed in the wisdom and good judgment of our Honorable Senators and that they will eventually appreciate that BDP is the game changer in our long battle to end communist terrorism in the country.”

“Sa pamamagitan ng BDP, maipapadama natin sa mga residente ng barangay na sakop ng BDP na hindi sila pababayaan ng pamahalaan,” he added.

Angara, for his part, claimed many lawmakers began supporting the plan to reinstate the original P28.1-billion budget for BDP after they received the report on the status of implementation of the 2021 BDP projects.

Año said the restoration of the BDP budget would the “best Christmas gift” the Senate can give to the rural folks, youth, farmers, and indigenous cultural communities” all over the country who would benefit from the BDP projects.