Inexcusable faux pas

Current media reports disclose that the recently-enacted Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act (RA 10931) does not provide the funding support for the government subsidy that will underwrite the payment of tuition in state colleges and universities. It is reported that the law does not even have any working estimate of how much money is to be spent for the purpose. Nor does it identify the source of the funds to be allocated as government subsidy.

Now comes President Duterte who openly admits that the funding for the government subsidy is problematic because according to his economic managers who had opposed enactment of the law, the government just does not have the money to implement it. Such absence of fund support creates a vacuum that renders the law inherently flawed, an oddity in public finance that should be eschewed.

To the extent then that government subsidy from public funds is needed to underwrite the payment of tuition in state colleges and universities, the free college education law partakes of the nature of a special appropriation law within the ambit of Section 25 (4), Article VI of the 1987 Constitution that states: “A special appropriations bill shall specify the purpose for which it is intended; and shall be supported by funds actually available as certified by the National Treasurer, or to be raised by a corresponding revenue proposal therein.”

By failing to indicate where the funds will be sourced from, the law does violate this mandate of the Constitution and, hence, is deemed as constitutionally noncompliant.

As it is then, so long as the law under scrutiny, in its present form, remains unfunded, it is unimplementable and likely to be reduced to a dead letter.

From the constitutional perspective, I view the enactment of the free college education law as an inexcusable faux pas.

BARTOLOME C. FERNANDEZ JR., retired senior commissioner, Commission on Audit