President Marcos must accept command responsibility for the 2025 GAA and the newly approved GAA.
In the early part of every year, the President of the Philippines, who heads the Executive Department, sends to Congress, as the keeper of the nation’s purse, a proposal for a National Expenditure Program (NEP) for the succeeding calendar year.
During the remaining months of the year, Congress reviews the administration’s spending proposal – poring over the components of the NEP, holding public hearings and soliciting expert testimony – and, upon the termination of the review process, approves a General Appropriation Act (GAA) that it sends to the President of the Philippines for signing into law.
The Office of the President undertakes a final review of the proposed GAA, after which the Chief Executive, with abundant ceremony, affixes his signature to the GAA. President signed the 2025 GAA in the last week of 2024.
The same process was observed for the making of the 2026 GAA, the sole deviation being that the President, citing a need for sufficient time to conduct a “thorough review” thereof, signed this year’s, GAA on Monday, five days beyond the Constitutionally-mandated effectivity date.
From the foregoing recital of the process for the making of the GAA, it is clear that the law embodying the government’s spending program could not have come into being without two signatures; the signature on the letter transmitting the proposed NEP to Congress and the signature on the GAA approved by Congress. Both are signatures of the President of the Philippines. The GAA-making process begins with the President’s signature and ends with his signature.
Truly, the President is at the heart of the process of establishing the nation’s annual spending program. Yet, nowhere in the discussions and analyses of the 2025 GAA and this year’s GAA has there been a forthright suggestion that, as this country’s Chief Executive, the President ultimately bears responsibility for the manner in which the nation’s resources are used. In the military, that responsibility is called command responsibility; in the civilian sphere, it goes by the same name.
Under the doctrine of command responsibility, the commander accepts responsibility when a mission or project entrusted to his command goes wrong; he does not turn around and put the blame on his subordinates. It matters not that he was not personally responsible for the debacle or failure; what matters, under the doctrine of command responsibility, is that it took place under his command.
History has recorded that many high-rank military officers around the world have been court-martialed, even executed, for the wrongdoings of personnel under their command. In modern military history, the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials of the World War II German and Japanese military leaders, respectively, are the best examples of the application of the doctrine of command responsibility.
In stark contrast, President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has been comporting himself as though he has never heard of command responsibility. He has been generously distributing flame for the flood-control projects fiasco among several groups of people within and outside the government including members of Congress. (Mahiya naman kayo”, he admonished them in his 2025 State of the Nation Address), the Executive Secretary and Cabinet secretaries and undersecretaries. The President has not accepted command responsibility for the worst scandal in the Philippines government ‘s history, and there is no indication that he has any thought of doing so.
Mr. Marcos obviously does not know or has forgotten, about the resignation many years ago of Japan’s Minister of Transportation in the wake of a train disaster in a prefecture far from Tokyo. The Minister believed that he should resign because Japan’s railroads were a part of his administrative command.
Unlike Japan, the Philippines has no culture of acceptance of command responsibility. In its stead, there is a culture of blame-shifting, back-passing and self-exoneration. This surely goes a long way to explain the role played by personnel character in Japan’s phenomenal rise to political and economic power.
As the official who commanded the Executive Department that prepared the General Appropriations bill and who signed the GAA into law, President Marcos must accept command responsibility for the 2025 GAA and the newly approved GAA. The 2025 GAA turned out to be a disaster; the new GAA may or may not be the corruption-free document that Congress has portrayed it to be.
(llagasjessa@ahoo.com)
