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Senator Joker Arroyo on Wednesday declared that “senators are all guilty” and must share the blame for the C-5 issue as the 2009 national budget that authorized the funding for the road project was approved by the Senate four times.

Arroyo said the particular item appropriating funds for extending the C-5 as a toll-free road drew no objection from senators as the budget advanced through the legislative mill.

“On four occasions, the members of the Senate agreed to the P200-million insertion,” Arroyo said.

Arroyo traced the paper trail of the bill from the approval by the Senate finance committee to the Senate’s ratification of the bicameral conference committee report, which hammered out the bill’s final version before it was sent to President Arroyo.

”What bothers me is this: Did we all not agree to the insertion of P200 million? All of us are guilty,” Arroyo said in his speech sponsoring the resolution acquitting Villar of unethical conduct in obtaining funding for the C-5 Road project.

“The finance committee is composed of practically the entire membership of the Senate. [Its members] allowed it; they passed it. After that, it went to plenary, and then after it went to plenary, we adopted it. No objection,” Arroyo said.

“In the Bicameral, it was adopted both by the House and the Senate panels. Then it went back to the Senate for ratification. We approved it. So on four occasions, the members of the Senate agreed to that P200 million insertion,” the senator pointed out.

Arroyo said all senators cannot escape blame as they are presumed to have diligently studied every bill that has come up for a vote.

“Are we now to say that we can just simply affix our signatures, raise our hands and vote for it and then later on object to what we did?”, he said.

Because the 2009 national budget carries with it the imprimatur of the Senate, then its members are estopped from challenging the feature of a measure they shared the responsibility of passing.

“We are in estoppel,” Arroyo said, referring to a legal doctrine, which if applied to the issue at hand precludes a senator from asserting anything to the contrary of a law that he himself helped craft. (PNA)
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