THERE’S been a flurry positive and negative speculations about the plan of the House of Representatives to establish a country’s “wealth fund” coded as “Maharlika” that the ordinary citizens can hardly make some sense of it.

At first glance, the first impression that one gets is that it is to honor the Marcos family that has since made a comeback at the Malacanang Palace, only to realize later, as expounded by House Speaker Martin Romualdez, that it’s a lot more than anyone can chew on.

The fund, as described, will not be your usual fund-raising event to help the country pay its debts but a scheme to invest all available resources and funds in investment opportunities around the globe that promise bigger returns on investments. Nothing wrong there until the bill cited funds of SSS and GSIS as among the sources of investment funds.  That’s when the citizenry became alarmed.

After incessant voices of protests were aired in mainstream and social media, the House bill authors eventually decided to remove funds from SSS and GSIS as fund sources to allay fears of possible disintegration of members’ benefits.

But the decision to cancel out both from the Maharlika Wealth Fund only served to confirm the fact that the plan was not fully vetted. (In fact, the use of the word “Maharlika” alone was ill-advised).

It is for this reason that we ask our six Pangasinan congressmen not to join the bandwagon to rush the approval of the Maharlika Wealth Fund for the sake of earning President Marcos Jr.’s favor.

The bill’s provisions still need to be debated with specific reference to the successful and failed experiences of countries that adopted the same investment scheme.

There have been a number of financial investment scheme foisted by past administrations that these never attained its ultimate goal – for the benefit of the people! The proposed Maharlika Wealth Fund invokes the same objectives but with different and higher degree of risks.

We note that the new Marcos administration has not even completed its 200 days of governance, certainly not long enough to test its capabilities to manage such a fund and fully understand how the risks can be fully minimized.

The Maharlika Wealth Fund should not be rushed!

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