THE whole brouhaha around the budget of the Office of the Vice President can be viewed as being a matter of political tug-of-war and muscle-flexing, a prelude to the midterm elections of 2025 and the presidential elections of 2028.
And there is some truth to that viewpoint. We all know that there’s been some friction between the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, two political players who were previously close and held together in some way by their friendship and loyalty to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. But politics being what it is, a matter of putting interests over friendships (heck, even over blood), alignments have changed. And we’ve seen how this has been reflected in the way the House has been treating the Vice President, a sea change since three or four years ago.
But I’d like to see the budget issue in a different way, and hopefully in a way that more and more people will, too. It’s about looking at discussing the budget of any branch of government as a matter of ultimate accountability towards the public. Remember that we are talking about funds that have come from the pockets of every Filipino that have now been entrusted to our political leaders for their proper use — proper meaning for the clear benefit of the people themselves.
Public funds, unfortunately, have been handled in a manner far from the level of accountability and responsibility that they should be handled with. Instead, public funds for so long have been treated as a private pool of funds into which public officials dip their “sticky fingers”, making me recall the words of a former House member, Davao de Oro’s Manuel “Waykurat” Zamora, who spoke about “king crocodiles” and their appetite for commissions and kickbacks.
Think about it: for this year the national budget is pegged at a little over P5.7 Trillion. Now think about it this way: how much is the leakage in our budget process? By “leakage” I mean how much of the budget amount is lost along the way, the way power generation has so-called “systems losses” in the area of power transmission. And think about it even further: if the budget system loss is 10%, that means P570 Billion that goes somewhere else rather than for the projects and programs they’re meant to fund.
And this is pegging budget system losses at “a mere” 10%!
Imagine if it’s 20%!
If you and I truly believe that in a republican democracy like ours, ultimate power is on the citizens, then we should demand that the use of our public monies be subject to the highest standards of accountability and responsibility. And why shouldn’t we, we’ve seen how much is “lost” if “only” 10% of the total budget is said to go elsewhere than to projects and programs. And the 10% involved is no loose change — it’s enough to fund health and education programs that our country needs, and desperately.
Public funds for the public good. Not for private pockets.
