Several posts circulating on Facebook (FB) are claiming that the bill filed by former senator Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino is similar to the controversial Maharlika wealth fund bill sponsored by admin allies. This is misleading.
A related claim has been fact-checked by VERA Files. (Read Arroyo, Marcos claim that Bam Aquino proposed ‘same’ sovereign wealth fund bill needs context)
On Dec. 4, the claim made the rounds online with a screenshot of the Senate website page featuring the bill filed by Aquino in 2016. One of the captions read:
“’Yung galit na galit ang mga #Dilawan at anti-gov leftists activists terrorists sa panukalang-batas na Maharlika Wealth Fund. Pero ang hindi nila alam eh mungkahi pa ‘yan nila panahon pa ni PGMA hanggang sa termino ni PRRD. Hindi nga lang naisabatas pa.
(#Dilawans and anti-gov leftists are mad at the Maharlika Wealth Fund bill. But what they don’t know is that this has been proposed from the time of [former President Gloria Arroyo] to [former President Rodrigo Duterte]. It was just not enacted.)
This claim is misleading. The proposed initial funding of the two wealth fund bills comes from different sources. As per Aquino’s bill, the sovereign wealth fund will come from the country’s surplus, while the Maharlika Investment Fund, as initially proposed, will come from the Social Security System (SSS) and Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).
Aquino himself countered this claim in a Dec. 5 post on his official FB page. The former senator said the bill was filed when the economy was prospering, unlike the present where the economy is on a downturn due to the pandemic and high inflation rate.
“The funds used for a sovereign wealth fund are usually derived from the country’s surplus… It’s clear that the fund should not come from the ordinary worker’s pension,” Aquino further said in Filipino.
Under House Bill 6398 or the Maharlika Investment Fund, sponsored by Senior Deputy Majority Floor Leader Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro” Marcos and House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and other government allies, more than half of the initial P250 billion investment will come from the money of SSS and GSIS members.
Authors of the bill later dropped SSS and GSIS as mandatory contributors of capital amid public backlash and caution expressed by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Felipe Medalla.
Aquino’s 2016 bill stated that the investment fund would come from the government’s savings and shall be appropriated in the annual General Appropriations Act.
The misleading posts spread after the young Marcos in a Dec. 5 ambush interview claimed that Aquino’s measure was “trying to do the same thing.”
FB pages Darwin Cañete sa FB (created on May 31, 2020), Team Philippines (July 17, 2016) and a netizen published similar posts this week, collectively garnering over 1,300 reactions, 100 comments and 170 shares.
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)