Camarines Sur Representative Luis Raymund Villafuerte said Saturday, June 5, that the "lousy" working relationship of the House of Representatives with Malacañang and the Senate has led to the "fiasco" of the proposed third Bayanihan law "not likely to see the light of day".

Villafuerte expressed doubt that the "Bayanihan to Arise as One" bill will be enacted into law even when the 18th Congress resumes session in July, citing the lukewarm response of the President’s economic managers and senators to the measure.

“The House leadership should have known the sentiments of Malacañang and the Senate before pushing this measure, which could end up gathering dust in the legislative mill because of the seemingly lousy coordination between the House, on one end, and the Office of the President and Senate, on other, on what further COVID-19 response measures are necessary in the face of the lingering pandemic,” said Villafuerte.

"Worse, even the President's own spokesman--Secretary Herminio Roque Jr.--said Bayanihan 3 was not an urgent measure,’’ he added.

He noted that the Bayanihan 3 bill was passed on third and final reading even if it lacked the constitutional requirement of obtaining a certificate of availability of funds from the Bureau of the Treasury (BTr).

The Senate has not yet tackled similar proposals in the chamber at the committee level.

“Speaker (Lord Allan) Velasco should have gotten the message but didn’t or refused to accept it,” Villafuerte said.

“He should have taken the hint that like the Senate, the Palace was cool to it, considering that the Bayanihan 3 bill was not even in the list of priority measures that the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) wants Congress to approve this year."

“Bayanihan 3 has turned out to be one big waste of time for House legislators, just like the proposal to amend the Constitution that been pushed by the House leadership via Speaker Velasco's RHB 2 (Resolution of Both Houses No. 2), even though the Speaker and his allies knew all along that it was practically dead in the water as senators were in no mood to act on it,” he further said.

Villafuerte is allied with Taguig-Pateros Rep Alan Peter Cayetano, whom Velasco replaced as House speaker after a controversial power struggle last year.

While he was listed as among the principal authors of the P401-billion stimulus measure, he was dismayed that the final version of the Bayanihan 3 bill excluded their group's proposal to provide a one-time P10,000 cash aid to poor families.