Among the biggest betrayals in the saga of the budget perversion over the past three years was the failure of both the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the Office of the Executive Secretary (OES) to inform President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the need to veto or mark the insertions.

The OES also shares the blame for not providing the proper advice on the budget.

According to former senator Franklin Drilon, the questionable items should have either been vetoed or marked for later release (FLR).

The insertions were made in Congress, which means they couldn’t have been done by accident.

“They had preconceived plans of how to steal money; so they were made in the Congress,” according to Drilon.

At the very least, the DBM and the OES failed to advise the President “on time and correctly.”

Both Cabinet agencies must bear the blame. Of course, the biggest responsibility also falls on officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways who deliberately allowed the insertions that also resulted in the bloating of the unprogrammed allocations (UA).

The items under the UA were to be released only if new sources of revenue were identified or loans were secured.

Since there was no new revenue, the hundreds of billions of pesos in unprogrammed funds should not have been released.

“In other words, there was collusion because they could have prevented the release of these funds since there were no new sources of revenue. So how were they released?” Drilon said.

While amendments to the budget are within the authority of the legislators, the insertion of unfunded programs, particularly those without new sources of revenue or new loans, is irregular.

Also irregular is the execution of ghost projects, which are all part of the process. Therefore, while Congress may have the power to propose amendments, it must go through a specific process. In fact, it is in the implementation that the process becomes questionable.

Drilon said that offices that were supposed to require accountability were not functioning as they should, which contributed to the current state of the country.

This level of corruption has not been seen in more than three decades, and most Filipinos do not only want retribution but the return of the public money.

Thus, it is incumbent on the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to act swiftly in putting a hold on the assets of those caught up in the mess.

“What I hear is that so little, or a pittance, was frozen while the rest have flown the coop. So I challenge the AMLC to make public — not the names of the accounts, not the names of the persons holding the accounts which were frozen — but the amounts of the transactions involved and how much was frozen in these accounts,” Drilon challenged the anti-dirty money body.

The failures of the various agencies under the executive branch contributed significantly to the abuse of the yearly budget — which is allocated to the people.