“Why is the President taking the cudgels for the cupidity of the legislators? Is it because he thinks they can deliver his dream of a 12-0 shut-out for his Alyansa senators?”
Few people really understand what the national budget is, more so how it is crafted and finally signed into law.
A former budget commissioner under Ramon F. Magsaysay, and finance secretary under Carlos P. Garcia, then senator of the realm before martial law was declared, Dominador Aytona later became president of the Philippine Banking Corporation.
An economist and lawyer, he was one of the greatest minds Bicolandia has contributed to government, and was active in the political movement against the dictatorship even before Ninoy Aquino was murdered in the tarmac. He was a senator when the Senate was truly august.
It was he who described the budget as the “economic program of government written in pesos and centavos.”
These days, and particularly for the current year, the pesos and centavos in the bicameral conference committee report contained blanks in lieu of pesos and centavos.
The president did some minor corrections in the enrolled GAB during the holidays and finally signed the General Appropriations Act on Rizal Day 2024. It is now his economic program for this year.
This writer as well as many others, in print, broadcast or social media, have described the process and the product crafted by the legislature, in particular the bicam machinations of the Elizaldy Co-Grace Poe led committee, as careless, criminal, and corrupt.
What astounds me is why the President is taking up the cudgels for this most corrupt budget when it is not his fault but that of the evil geniuses in Congress. The issue thus refuses to die.
He was presented with an enrolled bill where the blanks in the bicameral committee’s output was approved without reading in Congress, later filled in by what Stella Quimbo, the economist who wants to be mayor (hopefully not) of the right-thinking citizens of Marikina, has blamed on unnamed TWG staff whose responsibility is limited to correcting typographical errors before the GAB was printed.
The President has been quite defensive, first erroneously confusing the signed GAA with the bicam report where the blanks were exposed by Sid Ungab and FPRRD to the extent of calling his predecessor a “liar.”
Then, as the furor over the “mahiwagang budget” first exposed in a privilege speech by the president’s sister, Imee Marcos, raised more and more questions while the leaders of Congress and the chairs of the bicam committee maintained Sphinx-like silence, ES Bersamin rightly tossed the ball for Congress to explain.
The decapitation of Elizaldy Co as chair of the powerful appropriations committee by motion of the president’s Sandro, mismo, clearly meant Malacanang was most displeased. Yet the president kept defending a budget mangled by Congress, a national expenditure program that he and his economic managers crafted as the 2025 economic program of the nation.
Till now, he maintains that he has found no blank items in the enrolled bill received by Malacanang, even as no one has accused him or his Cabinet of filling in the blanks.
He has astonishingly claimed to have gone over all the 4045 pages of the GAB, and seen none of the “damned blank items,” yet saying “we’ll keep looking.” For what? I wonder.
And in what some quarters interpret as a veiled threat aimed at the Supreme Court, upon which his former executive secretary and campaign “kingmaker” Vic Rodriguez and Sid Ungab threw the hot potato for constitutional infirmity, the President says an adverse decision would “close government down.”
This writer does not think the President, with his conflict-averse character, is threatening our highest magistrates especially with an ES who was once SC chief justice.
It was to my mind a mistake, thinking in terms of the US of A where our president lived for quite some time, where a “hung” budget closes the financial tap on the federal government.
As his ES well knows, a re-enacted budget kicks in once the 2025 budget is stalled either by a presidential veto or a stand-off with Congress, or even an adverse decision on its Constitutionality by the high tribunal.
Definitely, it will not result in closing down government operations, as the President charged.
Why is the President taking the cudgels for the cupidity of the legislators? Is it because he thinks they can deliver his dream of a 12-0 shut-out for his Alyansa senators?
Contemporary history has shown that local candidates do not matter to senatorial choices as much as image, real or crafted, does.
The President could be better served by those closest to him.