Unsettled

The outrage over the manner the 2025 national budget was mangled is not about to end. This P6.326-trillion budget is, after all, the biggest heist of taxpayer money in our long and corrupt history.

Numerous religious, civic and business organizations, including retired senior military officers, aired their dismay over the manner the national budget was crafted. These are like the rumblings at Mount Kanlaon, seemingly gathering strength for a major eruption.

Earlier this week, a petition was filed before the Supreme Court praying the 2025 GAA be declared unconstitutional. The petition minces no words and describes the 2025 GAA as “illegal and criminal.”

The group filing this petition, possibly the first of several, is led by Rep. Isidro Ungab and former executive secretary Vic Rodriguez. It is significant that Ungab once chaired the powerful House appropriations committee and should therefore be more knowledgeable than most about how the budget process ought to operate.

It could take weeks for the High Court to deliberate the merits of this petition. This means the issue will continue to simmer in public deliberations and drive discontent.

In the event the Court finds merit in the petition, the 2025 budget could be trashed and returned to the legislators. This will be unprecedented. Budgets have been reenacted in several instances due to intense political power plays. But the national budget has never been declared unconstitutional. This will be an unparalleled indictment of the quality of governance Filipinos are forced to endure.

As the Court weighs the issues raised by the petitioners, the uncertainty alone will weigh on the national economy. A weighty sword of Damocles will hang over major investment decisions. Government programs will be caught in a lurch.

The budget controversy, however it is resolved in the end, will penalize all of us. It adds yet another reason for our nation to be the laughing stock of the world.

Public disgust over the way this budget was crafted focuses on the House of Representatives, which wields the power of the purse in the way our government is constituted. Last Jan. 13, while a million massed at the Luneta for a “peace rally,” the chair of the House committee on appropriations was unceremoniously dislodged.

Rep. Zaldy Co was the most energetic advocate for scraping together from other items of appropriation to fund the AKAP dole-out program as well as jack public works funds up to P1.033 trillion. The massive realignment of funds is obviously for electoral purposes.

The 2025 budget likewise increased allocations for both the House and the Senate. The increase was not requested for in the executive branch budget request. This is a point of vulnerability for the budget as it faces issues of constitutionality.

By unceremoniously dislodging Co, congressional leaders are hoping to nip the growing budget scandal in the bud. But what followed was a total public relations mess.

Rep. Stella Quimbo, replacing Co as appropriations chair, basically avoided the press for days. When she finally addressed the issues this week, she claimed that the blank items in the signed bicameral committee was merely a typographical error. The blanks were filled in by the technical staff acting “ministerially.”

Several veteran legislators argued that assigning appropriations is never a merely ministerial matter and members of the bicameral committee ought not to sign anything that includes blanks. In the face of backlash, Quimbo resumed her disappearing act. Her excuses are flimsy.

Even as Quimbo admits there were blanks in the bicameral committee report, the final input to the enrolled budget bill, her colleagues in the Senate continued denying there were blank entries. They are not properly coordinating in their cover-up.

The more of the sloppy budget process is uncovered, the more guilty our legislators appear to be. The more silly explanations they offer, the more their defenses collapse.

It is strange that after weeks of raging debate over the 2025 budget, Congress failed to simply produce both the bicameral committee report and the enrolled bill that is the basis of the General Appropriations Act. Meanwhile, each day, the public is treated to reports about how vital government programs have ended up defunded.

The budget crisis we now face will seriously tax public confidence in Congress. Already, one polling organization reports that public trust and approval ratings for both chambers of Congress have fallen to record lows.

If the 2025 national budget is the most corrupt ever, then the Congress responsible for it must be the most corrupt legislature in our tormented nation’s history.

Our government is now operating under a budget that could be declared unconstitutional. The political class that rules us through patronage politics is fast losing its legitimacy. The governing coalition’s political capital is quickly evaporating.

This is about as serious a political crisis as the nation ever saw. But no one seems in any hurry to fix things.

This lack of any sense of urgency over the obvious pillaging of the public coffers by those entrusted to look after the national welfare is disturbing. Perhaps our political system has lost its ability to enforce accountability on those who wield power in the people’s name.

Perhaps, too, our people have lost hope in having a transparent and accountable government with an electoral system that only keeps old dynasties and new clowns in power.