Duterte rejects cut in the budget of the forensic laboratory of the PAO

MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed a provision in the 2021 national budget that would have cut funding from the Public Prosecutor’s Office (PAO) forensic laboratory, which a lawmaker previously said was not authorized and was a duplication.

The provision is “inappropriate” as it “does not relate to particular allocations in the budget,” Duterte said in his veto message to Senate President Vicente Sotto III and House Speaker Lord Allan Velasco.

“The doctrine of ‘inappropriate provision states, among others, that’ when the legislature inserts inappropriate provisions into a general appropriation bill, those provisions should be treated as ‘articles’ for the purposes of the [Governor’s] the veto power of articles on general appropriation bills, “Duterte said.

Legislators cannot “encumber the blanket appropriations bill with veto-proof ‘logrolling measures’, special interest provisions that could not be successful if enacted separately, or ‘riders’ of substantive laws incorporated into a bill. of law to guarantee its approval without veto “, said President.

The head of the PAO, Persida Rueda-Acosta, on Facebook thanked Duterte for her direct veto of the provision that she attributed to Senators Sonny Angara and Franklin Drilon.

Drilon previously said that PAO’s lab duplicates the forensic work of government investigative agencies and promised to transfer its P19.5 million budget to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) instead of upgrading its crime lab.

He said the PAO did not have the proper authority and mandate to create its own forensic unit which it used to investigate and archive cases related to the alleged deaths caused by the Dengvaxia dengue vaccine. Even private health experts and health officials have questioned PAO’s findings, he said.

“In my opinion, their forensic laboratory has no legal basis. It is not authorized by its own statute. It is a mere duplication of the functions of our investigative bodies that has not been shown to be inefficient and incompetent,” Drilon said finally. year.

“The problem is that you want to be the NBI by setting up your forensic laboratory. Doctor ka na, pulis ka pa,” he told Acosta.

(You are already a doctor and also a policeman).

The PAO has filed dozens of complaints against officials from the previous administration for allegedly causing the deaths of several children vaccinated with Dengvaxia, which its manufacturer admitted could trigger more serious symptoms in some cases.

Acosta denied last year that his office caused a drop in immunization rates due to its controversial research on the dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.