SC requires appearance of Stella Quimbo, others during GAA oral arguments

The Supreme Court (SC) ordered Wednesday House committee on appropriations chairperson Stella Quimbo and members of the technical working group to attend the oral arguments on the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), Solicitor General Menardo Guevarra said.

“Rep. Stella Quimbo and the TWG staff have been required by the SC to attend the oral arguments on April 1, which may last till April 3, in Baguio City,” Guevarra said.

The SC issued the order during the preliminary conference on the case.

In their petition, former executive secretary and senatorial candidate Vic Rodriguez and others asked the SC to declare the 2025 budget as unconstitutional due to alleged irregularities and blank items in the bicameral conference committee report.

Other petitioners are Davao City 3rd District Representative Isidro Ungab, Rogelio Mendoza, Benito Ching Jr., Redemberto Villanueva, Roseller dela Peña, Santos Catubay, and Dominic Solis.

According to an advisory issued on February 18, the SC said the preliminary issues that will be tackled during the oral arguments are: 

• Whether the petitioners have legal standing to sue
• Whether the issues raised involve an actual and justiciable controversy 
• Whether the petitioners’ direct resort to the court is proper
• Whether the issue of constitutionality is the lis mota of the case.

Meanwhile, the SC said the substantive issues are: 

• Whether the GAA violates Section 15, Article II of the Constitution in relation to Section 10 to 11 and 37 of the Universal Health Care Act
• Whether the 2025 GAA violates Section 25 (1), Article VI of the Constitution
• Whether the 2025 GAA violates Section 5(5), Article XIV of the Constitution which mandates the highest budgetary priority to be given to education
• Whether the 2025 GAA violates Section 27, Article VI of the Constitution when the members of the Bicameral Conference Committee submitted a report on the GAB with blank items.

In January, Quimbo confirmed that there were blank items in the bicameral report, but she quickly added that funding for these items had been identified before the signing of the report.

Former President Rodrigo Duterte and Ungab flagged the supposed discrepancies in the bicameral conference committee report on the national budget, with Ungab saying that there were missing budget amounts for items under the Department of Agriculture and unprogrammed appropriations.

Ungab said the blanks could not be considered a typographical, grammatical, or printing error.

Duterte, for his part, said the budget items should not be left empty to be filled up later on. According to the former president, anyone who tampered with the budget could face criminal prosecution.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin denounced the allegations saying Duterte and the other individuals were peddling misinformation.—AOL, GMA Integrated News