Recto must pay

Recto must pay | Daily Tribune

Recto “et al.” should now be charged for plunder! If only to stop the “unscrupulous bright boys and girls” in government quickly from doing the same “foolishness” with our National Budget for 2026. It would be too much for the people’s sensitivities.

The Filipino people do not want the following foolishness to happen again!

1. “Why was there an urgency to transfer funds for the Panay-Guimaras-Negros (PGN) Bridges when the project was already fully funded by the Export-Import Bank of Korea?”

2. “Where is the money?” How many times did the “culpables” breach the threshold of P50 million in stealing P60 billion?

The following documents, among many others, were used to commit plunder:

Section I(d) of Article XLII for unprogrammed appropriations in the 2024 General Appropriations Act was inserted by the legislators and DoF Circular 003-2024, issued by former finance secretary Ralph Recto, which operationalized the funding of the pork barrel by transferring funds from strategic development programs and projects in the programmed appropriations to unprogrammed appropriations.

The Marcos Jr. administration has been placed in an ugly situation. To many people, the fault lies with the Secretary of Finance, who issued the DoF Circular 003-2024 without the President’s approval.

The controversial transfer of PhilHealth funds to the Treasury was facilitated by DoF Circular 003-2024, a disguised instrument of massive theft, “the more serious problem,” or a scheme to fund the pork barrel, despite the Supreme Court declaring PDAF unconstitutional.

Circumventing the ruling, legislators have deliberately defunded strategic development programs and projects in the programmed appropriations and transferred them to the unprogrammed appropriations, resulting in an excessive level of “standby” appropriations. This manner of massively funding patronage-driven projects distorts the integrity of the budget and the budget process itself.

President Marcos Jr. could not have approved the ideas and practices introduced by Recto for administering the state’s fiscal affairs, which are now under question. Keen observers believe that DoF Circular 003-2024 did not have the President’s approval.

They believe Recto acted alone. Then he should have been man enough to save the President and his administration from this problematic situation. He should have resigned.

On 3 September 2024, I wrote in my column that Recto was not correct, that his Department of Finance Circular 003-2024, based on the “insertion of a general provision in the 2024 General Appropriations Act, specifically Section 1 (d) of Article XLII, on unprogrammed appropriations, was an instrument of corruption.

Based on our experience in the aftermath of the congressional pork barrel fund (Priority Development Assistance Fund) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program investigations, the nature of the insertion rendered Recto’s DoF Circular 003-2024 worse than Florencio Abad’s Budget Circular 541-2012 on two counts.

First, Abad’s Budget Circular 541-2012 had written presidential approval, but was still very bad; while Recto’s DoF Circular 003-2024 had no written approval whatsoever.

Second, Recto’s circular covered what is by its nature a trust fund. It is the money of the poor for the poor; the blood money of government employees’ premiums for their health insurance; it is for indigents, senior citizens, persons with disability, Sangguniang Kabataan officials, and all Filipinos aged 21 years and above without the capacity to pay under Article II, Section 15 of the Constitution.