By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 14 – Is it worth saving a weak, incompetent and utterly corrupt president?

I am turning 78 in a few days, and my mind flew back to Benedicto David, a former NBC bureau chief in Manila who was one of my mentors. We shared a few years in the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC, where he served as Press Counsellor.

In a passionate discussion over lunch at a restaurant at DuPont Circle sometime late 1986, with Ben and Isagani Yambot, who would later serve as publisher of the Philippines Daily Inquirer, I poured my desperation at how the Philippines cannot seem to escape a self-perpetuating trap where poverty creates conditions like hunger, low income, poor health, lack of education and opportunity across generations.

Ben quipped, “It’s because we Filipinos have a problem for every solution!”

Six years after, while addressing the 1992 National Democratic Convention, Texas governor for thirty years, Ann Richards criticized fellow Texan, President George H.W. Bush’s efforts to balance the budget, as making superficial changes to bad ideas, saying “You can put lipstick (and earrings on a hog) and call it Monique, but it’s still a pig!”

This was an expression also often quoted by Barack Obama.

Richards was of course referring to ‘pork barrel’ and how politicians use government money to spend on the place they represent, giving it to their supporters and their local area. The word comes from American English: salted pork in a barrel given by slave owners to people under their chattel.

Pork barrel banned

In 2013, the Philippine Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), commonly known as the “pork barrel” fund, unconstitutional.

The decision on the Belgica v Ochoa case, penned by Justice Estela Perlas-Bernabe, nullified all laws authorizing discretionary lumpsum funds allocated to lawmakers.

Now these lumpsums are no longer appropriated for lawmakers but parked as  “Moniques” in the executive department where lawmakers are provided pigeon holes for “insertions” for their sponsored projects.

On top of insertions which are most notoriously done during the bicameral conference, is another “Monique” under a new nomenclature – “unprogrammed appropriations” (UAs). Technically, they are items that will only be funded if revenues exceed targets and when grants or foreign funds are secured but in reality, releases are subject to the discretion of the president.

The bicameral conference committee approved P243 billion in unprogrammed appropriations (UA) for 2026 last December 18.

The bi-cam adopted the House version, which is more than three times larger than the Senate’s approved P68.77 billion. Under the National Expenditure Program (NEP), the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) initially proposed P249.9 billion for unprogrammed appropriations.

UAs have drawn scrutiny after billions of pesos worth of flood control and other infrastructure projects under the Marcos administration were financed through the unprogrammed appropriations.

Rizaldy Co has earlier exposed that the President himself, inserted P100 billion, into the last year’s budget, half of which the former congressman and chairman of the House appropriations committee, recommended inserted as “unprogrammed”, because the public works budget will exceed and violate a constitutional provision prioritizing the Department of Education

Senate finance committee Chairman Sherwin Gatchalian sought to allay concerns, saying the approved UA would not be used for flood control projects and are “targeted accounts,” including funding for the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ modernization program and support for foreign-assisted projects.

When asked why these items were not placed under programmed appropriations, the senator replied the amounts involved are too large to be accommodated given limited fiscal space (echoing Zaldy Co’s concern). He qualified  that most of the projects would not require funding until the second quarter of 2026, when resources for unprogrammed appropriations are expected to become available.

Notably Supreme Court Associate Justice Ramon Paul Hernando’s concurring and dissenting opinion in the case involving the P60 billion Philhealth fund transfer to the National Treasury, considered UA as unconstitutional and should altogether be removed from the budget.

Opposition lawmakers, have also criticized the UA as “standby pork,” with members of the Liberal Party questioning its constitutionality before the Supreme Court in 2024.

An investigative media outfit reported that “in 2023 and 2024, the Marcos administration freed up P213.8 billion in unprogrammed funds for its “priority” infrastructure projects. These were handled by the Department of Public Works and Highways, which is now at the center of corruption probes.”

It added, “Unlike programmed items in the national budget, there was no oversight over these projects. No transparency. No democracy—because Congress as a body doesn’t get to vote on individual UA-funded projects. It only approves broad categories of spending that can be funded from these appropriations. Instead, funds for specific projects were identified and negotiated behind closed doors between executive branch officials and powerful members of the legislature.”

In an attempt to balance this observation, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM)  said the concept was introduced more than four decades ago and retained by successive administrations to cover calamities, foreign-assisted projects and other unforeseen expenses, paid from new or excess government revenues and foreign loans.

But the group asserts, “UAs represent what’s in effect free money that is prone to misuse. They say the national budget already has programmed funds dedicated for emergencies such as the Contingent Fund and the Calamity Fund. They also insist that priority projects, if they really were key to the president’s economic agenda,  should be funded from available resources instead of standby funds, over which there is scant oversight.”

2025 budget exceeded red flags

Meanwhile, last year’s appropriations totaling nearly P9 billion have raised the national government’s programmed budget to P6.335 trillion, higher than the P6.326 trillion approved by the president as year ago.

This is despite the president’s feigning the role of a whistleblower, when he denounced corruption in flood control projects in his July 28 state-of-the-nation address, as entire communities were displaced by the recent widespread flooding nationwide and ordered a comprehensive audit and legal action against those who misused public funds.

The Manila Times said, DBM data showed the excess of P8.98 billion in unprogrammed appropriations (UA) — items that will only be funded if revenues exceed targets and when grants or foreign funds are secured.

Unprogrammed appropriations were pegged at P158.626 billion under the budget signed by Marcos. The amount, however, was later raised by lawmakers to P363.24 billion earlier this year.

The newspaper explained, “From January to November, unprogrammed funds already hit P158.35 billion, with key allocations including P109.65 billion for foreign-assisted projects — P58.85 billion of which went to the Department of Public Works and Highways and P30.32 billion to the Department of Transportation.”

An additional P32.18 billion was released for infrastructure and social programs and P10.2 billion disbursed to government-owned and controlled corporations. Of the adjusted P6.34-trillion budget for 2025, the DBM has so far disbursed P4.07 trillion under the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), or 96.7 percent of overall financing amounting to P4.21 trillion.

The DBM has also reported disbursing 97.3 percent or P3.58 trillion of the allocated P3.68 trillion for government departments under the 2025 GAA. For special purpose funds, disbursements were at 91.9 percent, totaling P486.96 billion of the total allocation of P529.6 billion.

SC vs pork barrel

The 2013 decision on the Belgica v Ochoa case covered past and present PDAF allocations as well as related congressional insertions.

An estimated ₱10 billion of Filipino taxpayers’ money were siphoned off and diverted to Janet Napoles, participating members of Congress and other government officials, including senators.

The fertilizer fund maintained by the Department of Agriculture and some ₱900 million in royalties earned from the Malampaya gas field, were also lost to this scam.

The foreign press notably Gulf News, a leading, long-standing English-language daily newspaper since 1978 based in Dubai, provided an analysis on why our Supreme Court ban the pork barrels.

First,pork barrel funds were deemed unconstitutional because they violated the principle of separation of powers. The Constitution grants the power of the purse to Congress, but the allocation of lump sum discretionary funds to legislators bypassed proper budgetary processes and accountability.

Second, they  became synonymous with massive corruption and misuse of public resources. Numerous scandals revealed how these funds were often diverted to fake NGOs enriching a few while depriving citizens of essential services.

Third, lack of transparency and accountability.The funds lacked proper  guidelines, making it easy for lawmakers to discreetly funnel money to favore1d projects or groups without oversight. This fueled patronage politics and weakened good governance.

Lumpsums reborn as insertions

Despite the Supreme Court ruling, mechanisms such as “budget insertions” emerged as a workaround. These insertions allowed lawmakers to insert specific projects or funds into the national budget during deliberations, often without the transparency or accountability envisioned by budget reforms.

Insertions led to systematic realignments where lawmakers negotiated and realigned the national budget in ways that replicated the discretionary fund allocation pattern, but now disguised within the official budget process.

It continued risk of corruption and expanded across both chambers and created an opportunity for greater risks of kickbacks, favoritism and misuse of public funds, legislative collusion with the executive branch behind closed doors complicating efforts to curb discretionary spending that escapes tight government controls.

Technically, budget insertions differ from pork barrel funds because theyare requests or proposals made by legislators to include certain projects or funds in the budget. Unlike lump-sum pork barrel funds, they are ostensibly part of the legislative budget process. However, without rigorous transparency, they become vulnerable to the same abuse — favoring projects tied to personal or political interests.

The 2013 Supreme Court ban on pork barrel funds was a critical step aimed at promoting transparency and reducing corruption. But the unprogrammed appropriations and the  persistence of budget insertions within the Philippine budgetary system suggest enduring challenges in fully eliminating discretionary allocation of funds, continuing to fuel governance and corruption concerns.

Today, now, an ongoing probe has exposed more thanP1.5 trillion lost to corruption via budget insertions (from 2023 to 2025) just on flood-control projects and ghost infrastructures alone.

An audit of how UAs have surged under the Marcos administration. In the first approved budget of his term in 2023, the UA reached P807.16 billion, more than triple the P251.64 billion in 2022. The amount stood at P731.4 billion in 2024 and P531.7 billion in 2025.

Conclusion

Proceeding from what the Congressional bi-cam passed as General Appropriation Bill (GAB) for the signature of the president, the 2026 national budget would not have exceeded that of last year, had the Supreme Court not ordered the government to return P60 billion to Philhealth what the president “illegally” diverted from the agency’s private funds last year and primarily used for UAs including funding for health and social service or “ayudas” and to cover gaps for DPWH. 

That would constitute a double-dip into the people’s money, first as private in nature and now as public funds from taxes. Assuming the first P60 billion can no longer be recovered from where it was spent, the effective loss to the people is not P60 billion but P120 billion.

The heavy reliance on contingency funding and accommodation of insertions shows that President Marcos has no vision for the nation, no set mission to accomplish, no program for governance, ergo no platform for public benefit.

This government is on auto-pilot. This will explain why this government, counting four years into Marcos’ six-year term is devoid of any legacy accomplishment.

It is management not based on objectives or intelligent cause, but on abuse of naked power and discretion. Worse, it is governed with impunity that is with an overriding exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.

This is why instead of an apologetic demeanor exhibited by his father  exile, Estrada’s constructive resignation or Arroyo’s “I am sorry” declaration, this president who opened the floodgates of corruption by signing what has surfaced to be “criminal” budgets from 2023 to 2025, even feigns to serve as the “reformist” who will save us all from the corrupt congressmen, senators, public works officials and colluding contractors. Without remorse.

Maintaining the presidency in the hands of who is alleged to be the mastermind of the current plunder, is no different from putting the fox in charge of the coop. It gives credence to Lorraine Badoy, a professed DDS, who said: Marcos did not run for presidency to serve the people but to steal our money.

The man is incorrigible. He must resign.

To be continued

   

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