GMA WARNED AGAINST TURNING SSS ASSETS INTO SLUSH FUND

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said Malacañang's unprecedented act of conferring a Cabinet rank to incoming Social Security System Administrator Romulo Neri is obviously intended to make sure that he does not spill the beans on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's role in the tainted national broadband network-ZTE deal.

Reacting to the creation of a new Cabinet cluster on social welfare program to be headed by Neri, Pimentel said this is bureaucratic ploy of the Palace to enable him to continue sporting a Cabinet rank and to be covered by executive privilege that the President invokes to prevent her subordinates from responding to the summons of the Senate for investigation.

As such, Neri can always invoke executive privilege to evade answering questions that may incriminate Mrs. Arroyo in the broadband controversy if and when summoned again by the Senate.

"Considering his qualifications, I think Mr. Neri deserves to be placed in a cabinet - inside the bedroom of Gloria Arroyo so that she can keep tab on what he is doing and he can also check on her," the minority leader said.

Pimentel also echoed the apprehensions of several quarters, including SSS members from the private sector and SSS career officials and employees, that the pension fund held in trust and managed by the System may be used by Mrs. Arroyo for activities meant to prop up her presidency on programs not included in the SSS charter.

"In other words, despite his eminent credentials as an academic, I am not sure that Mr. Neri deserves to be in that position running the SSS, considering the circumstances, which may be turned into a slush fund of the President for purposes of her own personal agenda which does not respect the rule of law," he said.

Pimentel warned that the funds, assets and investments of the SSS, now amounting to P248 billion, cannot be used by the administration for such dubious purpose because this is a trust fund.

"I say this in all honesty because it looks like the President is always trying to play up to the crowd, saying that she is doling out so many millions of pesos, and then asking the rest of the government agencies to contribute to the funds to alleviate the plight of the victims of the recent typhoon when as a matter of fact she has lots of funds at her disposal already included in the 2008 general appropriations act running into several billions of pesos," he said.

The opposition senator also said he was saddened by reports that SSS Administrator Corazon de la Paz was forced to resign due to factors that made her continued stay untenable.

Pimentel said De la Paz does not deserve to be treated unkindly after having worked so hard to restore the financial viability of the SSS.