AN administration lawmaker yesterday said the claims of former President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte against the P6.326 national budget for 2025 is nothing but a calculated move to push for the reinstatement of Vice President Sara Duterte’s P2 billion budget in 2024.
“Former President Duterte’s allegations of ‘blank appropriations’ in the 2025 budget are pure disinformation. This is a deliberate effort to mislead the public and manipulate the budget process to bring back the P2 billion fund previously allocated to the Office of the Vice President,” La Union Rep. Paolo Ortega V said.
Congress approved a P733 million budget for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) in the 2025 national budget after the Vice President refused to attend the House of Representatives’ plenary deliberations on her office’s proposed P2.03 billion budget. Congress slashed the OVP’s over P1 billion allocation for its social services programs and realigned these to the Department of Social Welfare and Development and Department of Health, among other agencies.
Lawmakers have said that the decision to significantly reduce the OVP’s 2025 funding reflects the government’s commitment to transparency and responsible fiscal management since many of the Vice President’s projects were a duplication of the programs of the DSWD.
Ortega said spreading fake news “is an old tactic used by internet trolls to manipulate public perception.”
“Lumang style na ng mga internet trolls ang magpakalat ng kasinungalingan. Pero ngayon, mas maalam na ang mga tao kung alin ang totoo at alin ang peke (Spreading fake news and lies is an old style of trolls but now, the people are more knowledgeable about what’s true and what’s fake),” he said.
President Marcos Jr. earlier said Duterte was lying about the alleged missing or blank allocations in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), saying a spending measure with blank spaces has never happened in the country’s history and was never practiced by the government.
Duterte and Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab have raised alleged discrepancies in the signed bicameral conference committee report on the 2025 national budget and the GAA signed by the President.
Ungab claimed allocations for certain items under the Department of Agriculture (DA) and unprogrammed appropriations were left blank in the bicameral conference committee report that was signed by panel members.
Ortega accused Duterte of attempting to discredit the budget process to invalidate the 2025 budget and revert to the 2024 spending plan, which would automatically restore the confidential funds that Congress had removed.
“This sudden concern for budget integrity is laughable, especially given the unresolved corruption scandals during Duterte’s term, such as the Pharmally fiasco,” Ortega said. “This is nothing more than a desperate ploy to regain control over public funds. The 2025 budget has been crafted to serve the people effectively and efficiently.”
Ortega clarified that the 2025 budget “underwent a thorough and constitutional process and was signed into law without irregularities.”
“The so-called ‘blank allocations’ are a fabrication meant to sow confusion and undermine the administration’s commitment to fiscal transparency and accountability,” he said.
“Let’s set the record straight – there are no blank allocations in the budget. The reductions made were necessary to ensure that government funds are properly utilized and directed to priority programs that benefit the Filipino people,” he also said.
The administration lawmaker echoed the administration’s commitment to ensuring that every peso is spent wisely, in line with the nation’s development goals and urged the people “not to be misled by those who are spreading lies.”
“The Filipino people deserve a government that works with integrity and transparency, not one that thrives on lies and deception,” Ortega said.
BLANKS
Rep. France Castro (PL, ACT), a member of the Makabayan bloc, said the constitutionality of the 2025 GAA will be questionable if it is true that there are blanks in the enrolled bill passed by Congress and submitted to the President “because the Executive cannot just fill out whatever blank entries there.”
Castro, however said she does not know if the version of the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) distributed among congressmen which allegedly had the blank entries was still a working draft or if it was the final version that was submitted for the President’s signature.
“Maybe Cong. Ungab got the working copy from the bicameral conference committee, I’m not sure. However, you can’t say that the bicam copy is invalid because the final version is in the GAA for 2025. So if he can prove that there are blanks, we’ll really have constitutional questions there,” she said.
Rep. Raoul Manuel (PL, Kabataan) said he also found the blank entries in the copy of the bicameral-approved version of the 2025 budget which was distributed to lawmakers last December 11, just before it was ratified.
Manuel said he noticed the blank entries in programs under the Department of Agriculture: three in the Agri and Fisheries Modernization Program, two in the DA’s National Programs for fertilizer and hybrid seeds, one in small-scale irrigation projects, and another one in agri machineries, equipment and facilities and one in seed buffer stocking.
He said the budget for the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources had blanks in the National Fisheries Program and in Post-Harvest Equipment and Facilities, while the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) also had a missing allocation for the Coconut and Oil Palm Industry Development Program.
Manuel said also missing was the allocation for subsidy for national and communal irrigation systems under the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) and another two blank entries for Unprogrammed Appropriations.
REVIEW
Former senator Panfilo Lacson yesterday suggested that concerned parties make a thorough review of the enrolled copy of the 2025 budget bill and the approved version of the bicameral conference committee report to determine who are responsible, if any, for the alleged blank entries in the spending measure.
“The Filipino taxpayers deserve an explanation. An examination of the enrolled bill printed by the House of Representatives and comparing it with the ratified bicam report will expose those responsible,” Lacson said in his website.
Lacson, who tirelessly scrutinized the proposed national budgets while he was still a senator, said the bicameral report cannot be amended as “it is only subject to being ratified or rejected by either of both houses (of Congress).”
“Unless we examine the enrolled bill that Congress transmitted to Malacañang, we can’t determine yet who filled in those blanks – House of Representatives or Malacañang,” he added.
If the enrolled bill is different from the ratified bicameral report, he said the House of Representatives “should explain” this since it was the one in-charge of printing the enrolled bill.
“If the enrolled bill still contained the blank spaces, the burden shifts to the executive branch, particularly the Department of Budget and Management,” he added.
Lacson said the current controversy over the 2025 national budget “looks like a repeat of the 2019 General Appropriations Act, when former President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed P95.3 billion upon the then Sotto-led Senate’s strong representation after we discovered anomalous entries in the printed enrolled bill that were not reflected in our ratified bicam report.”
On March 26, 2019, former Senate President Vicente Sotto III wrote a letter to the former president expressing “strong reservations” on the P75 billion worth of programs/projects under the Local Infrastructure Program of the Department of Public Works and Highways which were allegedly funded through “internal realignments” after the bicameral report was ratified by both houses.
“I affix(ed) my signature with strong reservations. My attestation is limited only to those items approved by the bicameral conference committee and ratified by both houses of Congress. In particular, it is my view that it is unconstitutional that P75 billion worth of programs/projects under the Local Infrastructure Program of the Department of Public Works and Highways was funded through internal alignments after the bicameral conference committee report was ratified…,” Sotto said then.
“The President may wish to reconsider disapproving these unconstitutional realignments, pursuant to his constitutional power to veto particular items in the General Appropriations Bill,” he added.
Duterte signed the 2019 GAA on April 15, 2019, and vetoed the insertions.
Senate deputy minority leader Risa Hontiveros said bicameral budget discussions should be conducted with full transparency to cast away doubts that the budget measure is being manipulated.
The current practice is that members of the bicameral panel meet to signal the start of the discussions and then let the chairpersons of the Senate and House contingents to discuss the substantive portions of the budget bill.
Bicameral members will meet again to ratify the reconciled report. – With Raymond Africa