MANILA, Philippines — President Marcos yesterday accused former president Rodrigo Duterte of lying about supposed missing amounts in the 2025 budget, in a development that further highlighted the widening political rift between their families.
Davao City 3rd District Rep. Isidro Ungab, an ally of Duterte, has questioned what he called the “discrepancies” in the bicameral conference committee report on this year’s budget, particularly the supposed blank amounts for items under the agriculture department and unprogrammed appropriations.
Duterte claimed the P6.326-trillion national budget is not a valid legislation if it contains missing amounts. Placing anything in the budget that does not reflect the intent of Congress is a criminal offense punishable with imprisonment, the former president warned.
“He’s lying. He’s a president, he knows that you cannot pass a GAA (General Appropriations Act)...with a blank,” Marcos told reporters in an interview in Taguig.
“And he’s lying because he knows perfectly well that that doesn’t ever happen,” he added.
According to Marcos, a budget item that does not specify the projects to be funded was never allowed in the entire history of the Philippines.
Examining the copy of the 2025 budget uploaded on the website of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) would prove that the claim about the missing amounts is a lie, the President added.
“There is a copy available (on) the website of DBM. Look at it. You do not need to inspect it one by one. Look for the blank checks they were referring to. Look for them and see if you can spot even a single one. That will prove that I am correct in saying that it was just a lie,” he said in Filipino.
Fake news
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin described the assertion that the 2025 national budget contains blank amounts as “fake news.”
“Some quarters, including a former president, have maliciously peddled fake news about President Marcos having signed the GAA of 2025 with certain parts of the enactment purposely left blank to enable the administration to simply fill in the amounts like in a blank check,” Bersamin said in a statement.
“The peddling of such fake news is outright malicious and should be condemned as criminal. No page of the 2025 national budget was left unturned before the President signed it into law,” he added.
Bersamin said all 4,057 pages of the budget program “were exhaustively reviewed” by hundreds of professional staff from Congress and the DBM.
“This meticulous line-by-line scrutiny is a pre-enactment check performed by dedicated civil servants to ensure that the GAA contained no single discrepancy in the amounts being appropriated. It is impossible for any funding items to be left blank, as alleged by misinformed and malicious sources,” the executive secretary said.
“The true facts and the printed figures appearing in the GAA easily debunk the malicious claims of deliberate blanks being left for filling in.”
Bersamin said anyone who conducts the same rigorous examination of the 2025 national budget would come to the conclusion that there is no program, activity or project with blank appropriations. He added that the national budget was a “carefully vetted law.”
‘False and reckless’
In a statement, the DBM called the allegations “completely false and reckless.”
“What has been presented by certain misinformed individuals are pages from the Bicameral Conference (bicam) Committee Report and NOT the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) nor the GAA,” the DBM said.
“It is important to note that, under the 1987 Constitution, it is the Bill – the GAB and NOT the Bicam Report, that is officially submitted for the consideration and approval or veto of the President,” it said.
The DBM said that the GAB presented to and signed by President Marcos was a complete document with no missing details. Once the President signs the GAB, it officially becomes the GAA, the national budget law.
“In no case does the Executive issue a GAA with blank pages or figures,” the DBM said.
It also urged the public to verify information before making or spreading allegations, emphasizing the need for clarity and accuracy in public discourse.
“We kindly appeal to our kababayans to avoid spreading false information; communication is a powerful tool that can make or break a nation. Let us use it to promote unity and understanding, and not to sow discord, hatred and division,” the DBM added.
Salvador Panelo, who served as chief legal adviser of Duterte, said the former president did not allege any blank item and was just expressing a legal opinion on the assumption that what Ungab was saying was true.
He claimed that Marcos’ response was “misplaced” since it was anchored on the wrong premise.
“Hence, (Duterte) is saying if, as charged by Ungab, the GAA was signed with infirmities, then those responsible could go to jail,” Panelo said in a statement.
Panelo called on the media to examine the budget, saying the best evidence is the document itself.
Marcos and Duterte’s daughter Vice President Sara Duterte used to be close political allies but they had a falling out that became evident when she quit her posts as education secretary and vice chair of an anti-insurgency task force last year.
The elder Duterte had launched a number of tirades against the administration, even going as far as accusing the President of being a drug addict.
Marcos had just laughed off the allegation, dismissing it as a result of the former president’s excessive use of the highly addictive painkiller Fentanyl. — Keisha Ta-asan, Rhodina Villanueva, Mayen Jaymalin