DBM’s hollow sermon

How unfortunate and how laughable that the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), already knee-deep in the flood control scandal, now parades a “good governance course” under its Public Financial Management Competency Program (PFMCP).

The irony is impossible to miss. The agency accused of fumbling billions in ghost projects now wants to teach others about accountability. It preaches about the moral high ground while sidestepping its own mess.

Only weeks ago, DBM’s defense for the anomalous flood projects was not a formal report but a Facebook post, where an official claimed the department was merely a “collator” of submissions from the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

In other words, a stenographer. Yet the Constitution is explicit: The President submits a national budget to Congress based on DBM’s preparation.

Preparation is not mindless stapling. It requires evaluation, review, and consolidation. It means summoning agencies like the rotten-to-the-core DPWH to justify their requests. Shrugging off recycled projects worth billions cannot be squared with assigning culpability, no matter how often the DBM insists on hiding behind technicalities.

Against this backdrop, the DBM’s PFMCP comes across as theater. It promises to instill transparency and stewardship in the bureaucracy, but it seeks to do that in classrooms.

At the very least, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman should own up to her department’s unforgivable mistakes — and by calling them mistakes, one is already being charitable to her and DBM. On that front, DBM has offered no mea culpa, only errata sheets and explanations that try to recast billion-peso anomalies as clerical errors.

If the department cannot spot ghost canals or duplicate projects in the national budget, what business does it have preaching integrity to provincial accountants? If it cannot safeguard its own submissions to Congress, what credibility does it have in building an “immune system” against corruption elsewhere?

The sermon is particularly ill-timed as public trust is already frayed by recurring scandals where taxpayer money vanishes into pork and patronage while officials feign surprise. Filipinos are not asking for seminars. They are asking why billions slipped through DBM’s watch, and who will be held accountable.

Instead of rebuilding confidence, the DBM doubles down on public relations. It stages events, touts courses, and assigns undersecretaries as lecturers — as though symbolic, hollow gestures could substitute for institutional reform.

Real reform does not begin with PowerPoint slides but with transparency in the budget process, independent after-the-fact audits (certainly not by DBM, but by a body empowered to hand down jail terms), and dragging onto the streets those who allowed ghost projects to proliferate.

But with Filipinos being robbed blind by corrupt government officials, complicit engineers, and their cohorts in the private sector, apologies are not enough. Heads must roll — and that is a long-overdue proposition. Whose heads? That’s hardly a difficult question to answer.

As far as DBM is concerned, every peso spent on training programs will be dismissed as window dressing, another waste of taxpayer money. Worse, it signals a bureaucracy more invested in appearances and optics than in integrity.

If President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. truly wants accountability, he would confront the scandal head-on, clean house, and ensure such a travesty, reminiscent of his father’s rule, is not repeated until he steps out of office in 2028.