A MILITANT lawmaker yesterday challenged Malacañang to waive parliamentary courtesy and allow congressmen to scrutinize the Office of the President’s (OP) proposed budget for 2026 after Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and members of the Cabinet denounced congressmen for blaming some of them for the alleged insertions and errors in the proposed P6.793 trillion national budget for 2026.
“We call on President (Ferdinand) Marcos Jr. to instruct all executive officials, starting with the Office of the President, to waive parliamentary courtesy during budget deliberations,” Rep. Antonio Tinio (PL, ACT) said.
Tinio, a deputy minority leader, said the OP should be made to answer issues hounding some “questionable” appointments, the alleged bloated budgets for presidential trips and Palace renovations, and human rights violations and red-tagging of activists by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
The OP is seeking a P27.28 billion budget for 2026, P4.5 billion of which will be the President’s confidential and intelligence funds (CIF), the same issue that the House used to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte in 2025.
“They can’t hide behind presumption of regularity or national security. They have to prove to the public that they don’t have a ‘Mary Grace Piattos’ of their own,” Tinio said, referring to the most dubious name listed as one of the recipients of Duterte’s confidential funds.
Tinio said the Executive was “like the pot calling the kettle black” when Bersamin, in a statement last Saturday, told lawmakers to “clean their House first.”
“President Marcos Jr. cannot wash his hands of the systemic corruption that has thrived and reached unprecedented levels under his watch. Siya ang may kapangyarihan, siya ang may pananagutan (He wields the power, he has the accountability),” he said. “It is his budget, and he implements it. The buck stops with him.”
If Bersamin and the rest of the Marcos administration truly have nothing to hide, Tinio said “they should welcome the most thorough examination of their (proposed) budget,” which is scheduled to be heard by the House Committee on Appropriations this morning.
“Kung walang tinatagong anomalya, bakit takot matanong? (If there’s no anomaly being concealed, why be afraid to be questioned)?” he said.
He added: “Reminder to President Marcos: The annual national budget Is his responsibility because he was the one who proposed it and he ordered the passage to be expedited. He signs and approves and implements it. He can’t wash his hands.”
The OP traditionally breezes through the budget deliberations at the committee level because of parliamentary courtesy to the Executive department.
However, the situation may change because of the Cabinet’s allegation that lawmakers are “attempting to shift the blame for their own corruption and failures onto the Executive branch.”
The House leadership has yet to respond to Bersamin’s statement.
The rift between lawmakers and the Cabinet started after leaders of various parties led by Deputy Speaker Ronaldo Puno of Antipolo City last Wednesday night called on Speaker Romualdez to return the National Expenditure Program (NEP) to Malacañang, which he said was “mangled” at the Executive level and contained questionable allocations.
They also urged their House colleagues to stop participating in the budget hearings amid allegations that congressmen were the ones who made the insertions in the 2025 national budget during the bicameral budget deliberations last year, an issue that hogged the limelight because of the discovery of billions in “ghost” flood control projects across the country.
The lawmakers however dropped their plan to remand the NEP to Malacañang after the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) led by Secretary Amenah Pangandaman and the new leadership of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) under Secretary Vince Dizon vowed to address the billions of pesos worth of insertions.
‘STAY CALM’
Marcos yesterday asked Cabinet members to “keep calm” even as he sympathized with them for allegedly being “unjustly beleaguered” over issues in the proposed 2026 budget.
“I hope lumamig na yung mga ulo ninyo (I hope you have all cooled down). But I will have to just say that I perfectly understand why you are feeling a little unjustly beleaguered,” he told members of his Cabinet led by Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin who sent him off for a three-day state visit to Cambodia.
Bersamin on Saturday issued a strongly-worded statement telling members of the House to heed the people’s call for accountability and “clean your House first” instead of shifting the “blame for their own corruption and failures” to the Executive branch.
In an interview at the sidelines of the send off ceremony for Marcos, Bersamin said the Cabinet issued the “unified statement” to confront the threat from a member of the House to send back the NEP to the Executive, which he said was “unprecedented,” “not welcome” and “it’s not under the framework of the Constitution, not a proper thing to do.”
He said the Cabinet was also not comfortable with the call to return the NEP because it put the Executive branch “in a bad light.”
‘So, we had this consensus to come out with a unified statement. We did not provoke anybody, but we just said that we are objecting to the announced objective of returning the NEP to us. That should not happen,” he explained.
Bersamin also said that his call for the House to clean its own yard first was not meant to be sensationalized, but it was just a “natural mechanism for saying do not judge us, judge yourselves first.”
He said the Executive understands the claim of some lawmakers that there are red flags in the proposed budget, but these could be tackled and address during the budget briefings of the concerned agencies.
He added that the President does not want a re-enacted budget because “that is counterproductive.”
“The President has a sound economic sense. He always wants the country to move forward, not to go back or to slow down. And this is one way of slowing down. If you have a re-enacted budget, there are so many items there in that budget that can no longer be implemented. And a budget is one of the instruments of ramping up the economy,” he said.
‘ACTUAL PLUNDER’
Tinio said while there are indeed massive insertions at every stage of the budget process, from preparation by Malacañang to authorization by the Legislature, the “actual plunder” happens in the implementation phase, when the DPWH officials pay contractors and the overpricing and kickbacks are paid, a responsibility, which, he said, “falls squarely within the responsibilities of the Executive.”
Another Makabayan bloc lawmaker, Rep. Renee Louise Co (PL, Kabataan), said the President “cannot claim innocence over what has transpired over the past three years of his administration.”
“We reject Bersamin’s desperate attempt to portray the Executive Department as innocent victims of congressional blame-shifting. The truth is that corruption has become worse under the Marcos administration, from questionable infrastructure projects to bloated budgets that serve the interests of the ruling elite rather than the Filipino people,” she said.
Puno’s group earlier said their review uncovered “serious and systemic” anomalies in the preparation of the 2026 NEP, particularly in the budget proposals of the DPWH, Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Philippine National Police (PNP), and Department of Agriculture (DA).
Marikina City Rep. Marcelino Teodoro said completed infrastructure projects in his district are still being funded a fresh P100 million under the 2026 NEP, citing a slope protection project in Balanti Creek in Barangay Sto. Niño, which, despite having been completed in 2023, remains in the 2026 NEP under flood mitigation programs.
Teodoro also said that while repair funds were allocated for Malaya St. in Barangay Malanday even if the road is still in good condition, some vital projects are not given sufficient funds under the 2026 budget, including the unfinished drainage system along Sumulong Highway.
He stressed the importance of closer coordination among the DPWH, Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), and local governments to ensure that funds are properly allocated and urgent projects are prioritized and correctly implemented.
“I would insist that we consult our local government units because they’re the ones on the ground. We have to listen to them, especially about floods because they’re the first responders,” Teodoro said.
MISSING FUNDS
Las Piñas Rep. Mark Anthony Santos urged Dizon, who earlier ordered the courtesy resignations of DPWH officials from undersecretaries down to district engineers nationwide, to dismiss former Las Piñas–Muntinlupa District Engineer Isabelo Baleros from service and file the appropriate charges against him over the alleged missing P450 million funds allocated for his city.
Former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan earlier reassigned Baleros to the DPWH Metro Manila Third District Engineering Office after Santos questioned his involvement in alleged questionable transactions, including unauthorized transfer of funds for flood control projects.
Santos said that like engineer Henry Alcantara, the former DE of Bulacan’s First Engineering District who was immediately fired by Dizon for the ghost and substandard flood control projects in the province, Baleros should also be dismissed from service and charged.
Santos said Baleros could be held liable for multiple administrative and graft charges if he fails to account for the P450 million funds that were transferred from his district office to the DPWH Regional Office–NCR in July this year.
He said it remains unclear whether the nearly half-a-billion-peso funds originated from the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) or were congressional insertions made by his predecessors.
“We cannot let these funds disappear into thin air while our communities wait for real infrastructure. Accountability is not optional—it is mandatory,” Santos said.
He pointed out that Alcantara was fired for signing the contracts for questionable flood control projects in Bulacan: one with Sarah Discaya’s St. Timothy Construction Corp. worth P94.6 million, and another with Wawao Builders worth P74.6 million.
Alcantara was also blamed for a ghost flood control project worth over P96 million located in Barangay Sipat in Plaridel, Bulacan.
Santos stressed that these three major infrastructure projects alone amounted to P265.2 million — still, “far less than the P450 million in infrastructure funds for Las Piñas that remain unaccounted for by the DPWH central office.”
“If DPWH can account for P265 million worth of contracts in Bulacan, why can’t they explain where the P450 million for Las Piñas went? The longer they stay silent, the stronger the suspicion that something is being covered up. The public deserves answers,” he added.
Santos also urged Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla to place Baleros on the immigration lookout bulletin to prevent him from leaving the country amid allegations of irregularities.
“This is not just a case of missing documents – it’s people’s money. We cannot allow officials to handle hundreds of millions without accountability,” he said.
Santos said that like Alcantara, it was also then Public Works Secretary and now Senator Mark Villar who appointed Baleros to his post.
He said that on August 30, 2018, Villar signed Special Order No. 135 appointing Baleros as acting head of the District Engineering Office, replacing engineer Elpidio Trinidad. Baleros was formally installed as district engineer more than a year later.
Santos said records also showed that Villar appointed Umali as OIC of the DPWH Metro Manila Third District Engineering Office on January 4, 2021, a few months after he filed his candidacy for the 2022 national elections.
“Senator Villar owes the public a full explanation. If he personally oversaw these appointments, he must take responsibility and answer why these glaring irregularities are still happening under his watch,” he said. – With Jocelyn Montemayor
