Duterte vetoes bill expanding Solicitor General’s power
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 11:49:11 +0000
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte vetoed a bill expanding the power of the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), citing that granting additional benefits to the agency’s employees may be “too onerous to the government.”
In his veto message addressed to the Senate and House of Representatives dated March 7, Duterte said while he supported the strengthening of the OSG, he also considered the “impact” of the bill “on the entire government bureaucracy.”
“I am apprehensive that the provisions thereof granting benefits beyond the current compensation framework for other government offices may prove to be too onerous to the government,” the President said.
“The new benefits granted in addition to the benefits enjoyed by other government offices would erode the National Government’s thrust to standardize and rationalize the current compensation framework in the bureaucracy,” he said.
Duterte also said that granting additional benefits “will create too much disparity and inequality among the public servants in the executive branch.”
“It will undermine the principle of ‘equal pay for work of equal value,’” the President said.
“I thus once again urge Congress to prioritize reviewing this measure once again so that our share objective of strengthening the OSG would be realized without undermining other equally vital fiscal and policy considerations,” he said.
Under the enrolled Senate Bill 1823 and House Bill 7376, the OSG would take over the functions of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), which is tasked to recover the alleged ill-gotten wealth of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his allies.
The bill, if approved, would have allowed the OSG to hire more lawyers and augment its employee benefits.
The measure also seeks to extend the same benefits of Supreme Court and Court of Appeals justices to the Solicitor General when he or she retires after 15 years of service. CATHERINE S. VALENTE
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