EDITORIAL - Institutionalizing

CIF reforms The 2024 General Appropriations Act was signed into law yesterday with no changes in Congress’ realignment of confidential and intelligence funds or CIF from civilian agencies to offices involved in national security and upholding of the country’s sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea.

Lawmakers said the P5.768-trillion national budget included an increase of nearly P10.2 billion in the appropriation for the so-called security cluster, which includes the defense department, the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine Coast Guard.

The PCG, a civilian agency under the Department of Transportation, is tasked to patrol the WPS and other coastal areas, in an archipelago with one of the most extensive coastlines in the world. The PCG should have received a larger annual budget a long time ago. Its meager funding, reflected in its sea patrol capability, has been dramatically illustrated each time PCG vessels are harassed in the WPS by the massive ships of the China Coast Guard. The CCG, unlike most coast guards in the world, is under military command.

Among the sources of the realigned CIF are the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, which had initially sought a combined amount of P650 million in confidential funds for 2024. The House of Representatives had junked the request and the Senate went along with it. The OVP still faces a challenge before the Supreme Court for the P125 million that it received as confidential funds from the Office of the President in the second half of 2022, which state auditors said Vice President Sara Duterte spent in just 11 days in December. As mayor of Davao City, Duterte had also enjoyed hefty confidential funds, which ballooned from P114 million in 2016 when her father became president to an annual P460 million a year from 2019 to 2022.

With President Marcos also allowing the CIF realignment, the reforms on the allotment and use of secret funds should be institutionalized. The government must review a 2015 joint circular approved by the Commission on Audit together with the Departments of Budget and Management, National Defense and Interior and Local Governments as well as the Governance Commission for Government-Owned and Controlled Corporations. This joint circular allows local government units to declare hefty portions of their budget as secret funds, effectively exempting massive amounts of people’s money from the close scrutiny needed to ensure accountability and the judicious use of people’s money.