House leadership undertakes minor reshuffle

MANILA, Philippines — Nearly a month into the job, the leadership of the House of Representatives under Speaker Faustino Dy III has undertaken a minor revamp with the designation of four senior lawmakers.

During last week’s plenary deliberations, the House elected Rep. Ferdinand Hernandez of South Cotabato’s second district as one of the chamber’s deputy speakers, while Rep. Jan Padiernos of Galing ng Puso party-list was elected member of the House electoral tribunal.

Reps. Noel Rivera of Tarlac’s third district was designated chairperson of the House’s special committee on reforestation, while Ziaur-Rahman Alonto Adiong of Lanao del Sur’s first district was tasked to sit as chairperson of the House committee on suffrage and electoral reforms.

In a statement, Adiong said the committee will prioritize “bold, people-centered reforms: modernizing voting systems to combat disenfranchisement, enhancing transparency in campaign financing and safeguarding against foreign interference in our elections,” he said.

When the new Speaker took over the House helm vacated by his resigned predecessor, Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez, Dy – a representative from the sixth district of Isabela province – promised to undertake substantial changes in the chamber.

Dy declared the overarching goal of his leadership is to “restore the trust” of 115 million Filipinos in the House of Representatives, following allegations of massive corruption in government flood control projects.

Dy assured the public that he would be a “listening” Speaker.

“We will be transparent and accountable in our work,” he said in Filipino. “We will listen to you, our citizens.”

“No rank, no ally, no office will be spared from accountability,” the Speaker warned.

House goes on break

Today will be the last session day of the House, after a majority of the 318 lawmakers vote to approve, on third and final reading, Marcos’ proposed P6.793-trillion national budget for 2026.

The House plenary is expected to pass House Bill 4058, or the General Appropriations Bill (GAB) for fiscal year 2026, which the leadership, under Dy, said will be free from alleged insertions, unlike those in the current 2025 spending measure.

The measure was approved on second reading on Friday, after grueling debates in both the budget amendment review sub-committee and its mother committee, the powerful appropriations committee, simultaneously headed by Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Angela Suansing.

Congress will be on a month-long recess until Nov. 10 when session resumes after the Undas break.

Suansing assured her colleagues that all proposed amendments to the 2026 national budget were thoroughly discussed and properly reflected in the version passed by the panel.

She said no additional amendments would be introduced following the GAB’s approval on second reading.

During last week’s plenary session, the House scrapped the P35 billion worth of funding for Strengthening Assistance for Government Infrastructure Program (Sagip) lodged under the unprogrammed appropriations (UA) in the 2026 national budget.

Suansing said Sagip’s removal will, in effect, be an augmentation for government projects, saying this would already suffice, as the P249-billion UA would only provide support for the Philippine government’s counterpart funding for foreign-assisted projects, and social services too.

“Infrastructure projects would no longer be part of the authorized uses for UA, save for infrastructure projects under foreign-assisted projects and for strengthening assistance for social programs, which would be P45 billion in total,” she explained.

‘Climate budget mislabeled for DPWH’

Floods, just like any other natural disaster, may indeed be categorized as a result of “climate change,” which opposition lawmakers have recently discovered, since about P983 billion in the national budget for 2026 went again to the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

The House minority bloc, led by Rep. Marcelino Libanan of 4Ps party-list and Rep. Antonio Tinio of ACT Teachers party-list, decried what they described as “mislabeling” of projects in their scrutiny of HB 4058.

Libanan noticed the “mislabeling of certain climate-related expenditures” in the GAB, which the executive department presented to the House for evaluation and scrutiny.

“Though P983 billion is labeled as climate-related expenditures, 76.7 percent is funneled to DPWH, 13 percent to the Department of Transportation, and barely one percent to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). This is climate budgeting by mislabeling,” Libanan observed.

The 28 members of the opposition bloc stood behind Libanan when he delivered his fiery speech, where they noticed that even “critical programs” of the DENR have turned out to be “underfunded” in the 2026 spending budget of the national government.