Duterte allies sue Martin, House execs

Allies of former president Rodrigo Duterte, led by former House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, filed 24 counts of criminal charges before the Ombudsman on Monday against leaders of the House of Representatives over the alleged unlawful insertion of P241 billion in the ratified bicameral conference committee report on this year’s national budget.

Twelve counts each of falsification of legislative documents and graft were lodged against Speaker Martin Romualdez, House Majority Leader Manuel Jose “Mannix” Dalipe, former House Appropriations Committee chairperson Elizaldy Co, acting panel chair Stella Quimbo, and several John and Jane Does — representing the House’s technical staff — whose identities had yet to be ascertained at the time of filing.

Alvarez was joined by senatorial aspirant lawyer Jimmy Bondoc of PDP Laban and lawyer Ferdinand Topacio and Diego Magpantay, chairperson and president, respectively, of Citizen’s Crime Watch, among others, during the filing at the Ombudsman.

“Imagine the insertion of P241 billion; that’s a huge amount. You can’t say that it was just a typographical error corrected by a technical working group. That is difficult, a large amount is involved,” Alvarez told reporters in Filipino in an interview after the complaint was filed.

The 12 counts each of falsification of legislative documents and graft represent the supposed 12 blank items in the bicameral report that were purportedly later filled in with appropriations, according to Topacio.

“The one approved by the bicam was zero; it said zero. So when it came to the President, it must also be zero. You can’t put in zero and then make it P90 billion or P80 billion or even P10,000. You can’t do that,” Topacio said.

The complainants accused the House leaders of illegally inserting P241 billion in the bicam report, after it was ratified by both the House and the Senate, in violation of Article 170 of the Revised Penal Code.

“The crime happened [in the House]. If it was in the Senate, perhaps the Office of the Ombudsman can also summon the Senate,” Alvarez said.

The report was the outcome of the harmonized House and Senate versions of the 2025 General Appropriations Bill (GAB).

Earlier, Quimbo asserted that anyone could scrutinize the enrolled bill, which was publicly available on the House’s website, to see for themselves its “completeness [and] compliance with due process.”

Further, she argued that the enrolled GAB was “complete, with no blank allocations among its more than 235,000 line items,” making the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) “lawful, valid, and fully enforceable.”

Retaliation?

While she explained that the supposed blank items were only for the final computations and were merely ministerial on the part of the technical staff — who were explicitly authorized by the bicameral panel — the funding for these items had been identified before the signing of the report.

Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin denied the Palace had a hand in the bicameral report, calling it an internal matter for Congress.

Nevertheless, Bersamin maintained that there were no blank items in the enrolled budget bill, which was the version forwarded to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for his signature.

Marcos himself said he did not see any blank pages.

The controversy surrounding the so-called blank items in the bicameral report on the 2025 budget was first highlighted by former president Duterte and Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab, the erstwhile appropriations panel chair.

Dalipe, in response, expressed the belief the filing of the criminal charges was politically motivated and in retaliation for the House impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte last week.

“The mere fact that only the House has been impleaded in the complaint raises serious questions about the true intent behind these allegations. The budget process is a shared responsibility, yet the focus on one chamber alone suggests a deliberate effort to mislead the public and cast doubt on the integrity of the House’s work,” he noted.

The lawmaker also took issue with Alvarez, a prominent Duterte ally, for spearheading the move.

“As a sitting member of the House during the deliberations on the 2025 General Appropriations Bill, he had every opportunity to raise objections, question allocations, and point out any supposed infirmities during plenary discussions,” Dalipe said.

“Yet, he did not. His silence during the legislative process and his sudden emergence as a complainant only reinforce the fact that these accusations are not grounded on actual violations but are politically motivated attacks meant to discredit the House leadership,” he said.

Alvarez refutes charge

Alvarez, however, countered that the filing of the charges had nothing to do with the VP’s impeachment or that it had the imprimatur of former president Duterte.

“It was them who made the diversionary tactic. They created the issue that covers this scandal in the 2025 budget,” he asserted.