“In the 2025 budget, the insertions on line items as well as unprogrammed appropriations resulted in the most corrupt budget in history”
FACTS written about in this space or stated in TV interviews are being proven by the discoveries unearthed in the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings presided over by Sen. Ping Lacson.
Ever since the Supreme Court outlawed the PDAF, another name for “pork barrel” in the wake of the Napoles scandal involving legislators from both houses of Congress, our astute legislators have been conniving with district engineers sanctioned by the DPWH central office to incorporate in the president’s budget, mismo, their “priority” projects.
District engineers are by long standing practice, the “appointees” or assigns of congressmen, but for a handful who find it beneath their dignity to meddle into a purely executive function.
Then, the DPWH submits its proposed budget to the DBM which crafts the NEP. In fine, pork is already incorporated in what DPWH calls a “leadership fund” even before the NEP is submitted to Congress.
Congress cannot pass a GAA which is higher than the NEP submitted by the president, but it can re-align sums according to what our legislators deem as more important and efficient fund utilization.
That is theoretical, because in practice, they prioritize their district interests and, worse, fund projects where the “commissions,” which are deemed “obligations” by contractors and DPWH personnel are “satisfactory.”
Per the confessions in the Lacson committee hearings, “obligations” to legislators were 5-10 percent in PNoy’s time, then 10-15 percent under PRRD, and has grown to 25-30 percent under PBbM.
That is what goes to the legislator-proponent either in the NEP, or through the GAA in the House, thence the bicam, and finally passed and sent to Malacanang for the president to sign into law.
In those final steps, the web of conspiracy between DPWH (as well as other agencies) and the Houdini’s in Congress are finalized.
In the 2025 budget, the insertions on line items as well as unprogrammed appropriations resulted in the most corrupt budget in history.
The favorite “priority” is flood control, where the “obligations” are settled through sub-standard construction by contractors who are part of “the web” of the DPWH syndicates.
Worse than sub-standard, there are “ghosts,” but, altogether, these have caused floods to worsen, and even create floods where there used to be none.
Many more will be unearthed in both the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and the Investigative Commission for Infrastructure.
Many more scams, hopefully to include decrepit and over-priced classrooms, perhaps with another set of “ghosts,” in farm-to-pocket roads, in multi-purpose buildings, in sports centers, even in hospitals.
The web is as criminal as criminal can possibly be.
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The outrage from all sectors of society, from the rich to the lumpen proletariat who attacked the police, was so clearly expressed in separate rallies last Sept. 21.
Shocked by the looming public anger, the president was forced to cause the replacement of his first cousin and chief political confidante, days before last Sunday’s storm of discontent.
It is noteworthy the new Speaker immediately ordered the missing Chief Houdini of the 2023-24-25 GAA to return to the country from wherever in the universe he is hiding.
Next, he publicly stated that those InfraComm hearings presided over by the toady of the Chief Houdini who spun the notorious web among agencies of the executive and the legislature to line deep private pockets should stop and defer to the ICI.
So far so good.
The new DPWH secretary removed flood control from his department’s earlier approved 2026 proposal, which amounted to a huge 255 billion pesos, as he and the ICI seek out the culprits.
Which is the right thing to do, but no sooner had he disavowed 255 billion than the Chair of the Appropriations Committee announced they will seek ways by which to re-align the amount to the “right” priorities.
Congressmen are already salivating over the unexpected bonanza, like crocodiles sensing new prey.
With such a huge fiscal deficit accompanied by a humongous public debt, why not just reduce the 6.793 trillion NEP by said amount, along with other unnecessary expenditures to include even the Office of the President and Congress itself, as a sign of willingness to reform governance?
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Meanwhile, to Sen. Erwin Tulfo who in bombastic tone declared last Tuesday that “sometimes you have to bend the law to be able to please the people,” eliciting a sheepish “Yes Sir” from the DOJ secretary, while Sec. Rudy Quimbo of the committee was beside himself in amused laughter at Tulfo’s back, I commend the immortal words of Alexander Pope in “An Essay on Criticism”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
