Regional elections for Senators

The Senate membership or the senators are the representative of the entire country, but the reality is, majority of our senators are from Luzon, with a sprinkling coming from the Visayas and Mindanao. Given the chance to elect the senators by regions, first, this will give regions outside Imperial Manila a chance to be adequately represented in the Senate.The Senators fund allocations will be directly goes to their constituents needs, benefits, and developmental projects that will lessen the corruption as every senators are accountable for their respective region. As it shown in the past our respective senators prioritized their regions specifically their provinces when it comes to fund allocation of their Priority Development Fund. Second, it will reduce the expenses to be shouldered by the candidates, from the actual campaign to the number of watchers they will require, as they would focus their resources in their specific regions rather than the entire country. Less expenses might encourage more deserving but financiallyhandicapped candidates to come forth and throw their hats in the political arena The election of senator per region will be the first step to attain the development in every region and to at least lessen the people living below the poverty line that will result vast economic growth of the entire country. For this reasons, I am in favour of electing senators on a regional basis. II- The priority Development Assistance Fund is a discretionary fund available for the member of Congress, the Senators and the House of Representatives. It is designed to allow the Legislators to fund small scale infrastructure and is amount is dependent with a relationship of the Senators to the sitting President meaning the PDAF allocation can be decreased or increased at any given time and having more number of Senator do not necessarily mean that the budget requirement will automatically increase. III- The budget allocation of the Senators are not equally distributed, for example Senator Edgardo Angara has a scholarship program that the first requirement is the applicant must be a bona fide resident of Aurora Province, the Senator home province. Second, Senator Chiz Escudero allocated P54M of his PDAF to Sorsogon compare to the allocation to Tawi Tawi amounting to P5.5M considering that Tawi Tawi needs more assistance being one of the poorest province in the Country and ARMM as one of the poorest Region in the Country.

MARIVIC ZACARIAS-LOZANO

(Pro/In favour)