Just say no

Three cheers for the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs. Asked by senators during budget deliberations if the DFA was asking for confidential funds, Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo said no.

How many other heads of agencies can do the same will indicate the level of commitment to transparency under Marcos 2.0.

A senator said Department of Migrant Workers officials had also turned down confidential funds, in memory of the late DMW secretary Toots Ople, who would have rejected secret funding. But with Sen. Raffy Tulfo endorsing the funding, DMW officials have tossed out the memory of Toots, even before the end of the 40-day period of mourning over her demise.

In the case of the congressional pork barrel, only two senators had eschewed the allocation: Panfilo Lacson and Joker Arroyo. Everyone else found a reason to hold on to it, until the Supreme Court scrapped the pork barrel system.

Even the so-called progressive congressmen found excuses to keep their pork barrel. Rodrigo Duterte and his anti-communist task force would later accuse the congressmen of funneling their pork barrel to the communist insurgency.

Giving public officials wide discretion in the use of people’s money is always risky. During the Arroyo administration, part of her contingency fund was tapped when the expenses for her globe-trotting exceeded the allocated budget.

Officials can always find an event they can attend overseas to justify a public-funded junket. All those so-called roadshows declaring the Philippines open for business have failed to pull the country out of its bottom spot among the ASEAN-6 in terms of foreign direct investments and per capita GDP.

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The confidential funds are the civilian agency equivalent of intelligence funds for state security and law enforcement agencies.

Surprisingly, the champion of opaqueness in government, Ombudsman Samuel Martires, also said his office could do without the P51-million confidential funds proposed for 2024.

Maybe he has seen the trouble engendered by confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education. VP and concurrent DepEd chief Sara Duterte said she would bow to Congress on the issue – which goes without saying, since Congress is the one that approves the funding allocations.

Yesterday, the House of Representatives approved its version of the 2024 appropriations bill, stripping the OVP of confidential funds.

Where VP Sara’s heart lies on the issue can be inferred from her letter dated Aug. 22, 2022 to the Department of Budget and Management, for P403.46 million additional funding for the remainder of the year, including P250 million in confidential funds. The DBM released P125 million of the P250 million for what the VP described as “various projects and activities under the Good Governance program.” Last year, the OVP said this program covered public assistance projects.

The DBM also released P96.424 million as “augmentation” for financial aid released by seven OVP satellite offices in the gift-giving ’ber months of 2022.

Those intended purposes don’t fall under the Commission on Audit (COA) definition of confidential funds. Also, as Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman has pointed out, the P150 million was sourced from the contingent fund of the Office of the President (OP).

Contingency and confidential funds are two different animals, and not just in spelling; Lagman said contingent funds cannot be used for confidential purposes, especially when there isn’t even an item for confidential funds approved in an agency’s budget for the year.

The OVP’s budget for 2022 was prepared in 2021, of course by the VP at the time, Leni Robredo, who had no use for confidential funds in all her six years in office. Lagman said the fund transfer – or “augmentation” of a non-existent item in an approved budget, purportedly from savings that were already depleted – is unconstitutional.

On Wednesday, VP Sara tangled with Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo. The VP insisted that the P150 million was spent in 19 days in December, as originally reported, and not 11 days as Quimbo had clarified, citing a COA report.

You don’t know if we should laugh or cry over this. The Philippine Coast Guard was allocated a total of P118.7 million in secret funds in 17 years, from 2006 to 2023.

Citing growing threats in the West Philippine Sea, lawmakers are now realigning all confidential and intelligence funds or CIF for 2024 to the military, police, intelligence and state security agencies as well as the coast guard and the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.

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It’s interesting that VP Sara’s letter requesting for the confidential funds was made public. Yesterday, a COA report also surfaced, showing Inday Sara’s predilection for confidential funds even when she was Davao City mayor and enjoyed P460 million a year in secret funds from 2019 to 2022 – up from P144 million when her father became president in 2016.

How far is the super majority prepared to go on this issue? Lagman says the fund transfer from the OP to the OVP is unconstitutional. This can be an impeachable offense. Will the super majority impeach BBM’s avowed BFF?

While VP Sara wasn’t the one who approved it, she was the one who requested and used the funds. The budget chief who approved the fund transfer may also have to face charges.

Short of impeachment, the VP can be prosecuted. Unlike a sitting president, the VP is not immune from suit while in office. Will VP Sara be charged in connection with illegal fund diversion? Certainly not by the ombudsman, who was appointed to the seven-year position (with a fat pension) by the VP’s father.

If Congress realigns all CIF to the agencies that genuinely engage in non-partisan intel gathering, VP Sara can always say she can live without the confidential funds.

Pinoys call this being “forced to good” – a situation wherein one is left with no choice but to bow to the inevitable.

Other agency heads who understand the importance of public accountability, and who honestly see no need for secret funds should not wait to find themselves in such a forced situation.

When asked by lawmakers if confidential funds are needed to carry out their mandate, the agency heads can simply say no.