Initial gains vs red-tagging and confidential funds

The month of September, for the country’s beleaguered human rights defenders, has seen a few modest successes in their fight against political repression.

Likewise, in Congress, the past weeks have shown us how, through sustained efforts by the tiny minorities in both chambers – backed by public protests on the ground, online and in mainstream media – can stymie questionable budget allotments in government agencies and offices. Most notable has been the uncovering, and possible realignment, of stupendous confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President.

Interestingly on both issues, the Office of the Ombudsman, under former Supreme Court Justice Samuel Martires, has shown its willingness to surprise a jaded public. The “champion of opaqueness in government,” as this paper’s editor-in-chief Ana Marie Pamintuan described it in her column yesterday, has declared that his office could forego the P51-million confidential fund (which it had enjoyed in the past five years) for the next two remaining years of his term.

Let’s first look into the ombudsman’s decision, issued on Aug. 9 but made public only recently, on the complaint filed by the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) back in 2020, against two former spokespersons of the NTF-ELCAC, now retired Lt. Gen. Antonio Parlade Jr. and Lorraine Badoy. Calling out their unrelenting red-tagging of the NUPL, the advocacy group charged the two with grave misconduct, grave abuse of authority and conduct prejudicial to the interest of the public service.

The ombudsman found Parlade and Badoy guilty of only the last charge. And only the lowest penalty, reprimand, was imposed for “conduct prejudicial to the interest of the service.” They were “sternly warned” that “a repetition of a similar offense would be dealt with more severely.” Of course that may not be likely to happen, as both of them are no longer officially in the government.

While saying that, at present, “there is no law or legal basis which defines and penalizes red-tagging,” the ombudsman affirmed that the NUPL and other progressive groups do not engage in communist propaganda. He therefore rebuked the NTF-ELCAC for perpetuating the notion that it is “being used as a government tool to silence dissent or opposition instead of pursuing its ultimate goal of lasting peace and ending the armed conflict with communist rebels.”

NUPL welcomed the decision: “It implies that any reckless innuendo and gratuitous vitriol against human rights lawyers (and by extension against activists and human rights defenders) to silence dissent, opposition or rights awareness will not be countenanced and will be sanctioned one way or another, sooner or later, in time.”

While acknowledging that the decision was not fully satisfactory to them and that “it seems like a pyrrhic victory as it fell short of our plea for complete legal accountability,” NUPL chairperson Edre U. Olalia said “the finding of guilt…and the categorical reprimand to General Parlade and a certain Ms. Badoy can be viewed as a loud warning shot, as it were.”

Weighing in on the decision, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza of the Diocese of San Carlos in Negros, who has himself been red-tagged by Badoy, commented:

“We hope to have more signs of hope that we will feel protected for speaking out the truth and to call to task those in power so that they won’t be abusive and just perform their mandates. The effect of red-tagging is really to silence and make the world small for those striving to correct what is wrong in the society.”

While the ombudsman decision “is a positive step,” Alminaza added, “We expect more and continued assurance to our people who are advocating for social change and improving the lives [of the people] in the Philippines.”

Last Feb. 22, Badoy and her co-host in a television program, Jeffrey Celiz, labeled Alminaza’s call for the resumption of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations (“terminated” by Rodrigo Duterte in 2017) as “diabolical and demonic.”

Asked for his opinion on the hot issue of the huge confidential funds that Vice President Sara Duterte says she needs in order to do her job, Martires declared he would be ready to give up his own such allotment of P51.5 million “if it will only taint the reputation of the ombudsman and its office.”

“I think we can survive without confidential funds,” he said, adding, “I would like to be the first from the investigating agencies to request Congress that… we will not have confidential funds during the [the rest of] my term in office.”

It looks like Martires is being mindful that, in the raging controversy involving the Vice President, questions, including probable violations of the Constitution, remain unresolved. We still don’t know, or can’t fathom, how she could have spent, in only 11 days, P125 million of such funds that she had requested from the Office of the President in August 2022, and which request was granted in early December.

Even with an announcement by House leaders that the controversial OVP confidential funds might be realigned to other agencies, it’s still unclear if that will actually be the outcome of all this hullaballoo. Before summarily approving the P5.7-trillion 2024 national budget, the House formed a small committee of four members to decide, among other things, on Duterte’s proposed confidential funds amounting to P500 million for the OVP and P150 million for and Department of Education, respectively.

Appropriations committee chairperson Rep. Elizalde Co has disclosed a consensus among House leaders to reallocate the confidential funds to the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA, the secretariat of the Anti-Terrorism Council), the National Security Council (headed by National Security Adviser Carlito Galvez Jr.), the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and the Philippine Coast Guard, which over a decade had received yearly only P10 million in confidential funds.

But, the Makabayan bloc of progressive partylist legislators has taken a firm stand: There should be no confidential funds for all civilian agencies that are not mandated to conduct surveillance or gather intelligence.