Accessory to a crime

Accessory to a crime | Daily Tribune

The duplicitous Makabayan bloc, a pawn of the House leadership, has stated that there is no sufficient basis at this time to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

Instead, the left-wingers said they will focus on pursuing the ouster of Vice President Sara Duterte, citing her alleged misuse and mishandling of confidential and intelligence funds in the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, including P612.5 million in claimed irregularities like fabricated receipts and unverified recipients, betrayal of public trust, and threats against Marcos and other officials, which they view as impeachable offenses.

The previous impeachment initiated by the hypocritical mob led by the bloc was struck down by the Supreme Court on 25 July 2025 in a unanimous 13-0 ruling, with two justices on leave or who recused themselves.

The decision held that the Articles of Impeachment against VP Duterte were unconstitutional because they violated the one-year bar rule under Article XI, Section 3(5) of the Constitution, which prohibits initiating more than one impeachment proceeding against the same official within one year.

Three prior complaints had been filed in December 2024 and deemed terminated or archived by February 2025, making the fourth complaint endorsed by the House of Representatives on 5 February 2025 invalid.

The ruling also stated that the action led by the Makabayan bloc violated due process by denying the Vice President the opportunity to be heard at key stages.

A House peer said Marcos was accountable for manipulating the national budgets since the start of his term, primarily by being complicit in the use of Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA) to build up a pork barrel for his allies.

Davao City Rep. Isidro Ungab particularly assailed what he called the “reckless and indefensible defunding” of foreign-assisted projects (FAPs) in both the 2024 and 2025 national budgets.

“The budgets under Marcos are perhaps the most distorted and compromised financial plans ever passed by Congress,” Ungab declared.

He said the government negotiated loans, signed agreements with the President’s authority, paid commitment fees, and yet, when the appropriations bill was signed into law, billions in project funding had mysteriously vanished from the budget and were shifted to the UA.

“This is fiscal sabotage, plain and simple,” according to Ungab.

In 2024, of the P246 billion requested by the President for foreign-funded projects, Congress authorized only P4 billion, leaving 98.4 percent of critical projects transferred to the UA with tentative funding.

In the 2025 budget, the requested P215.6 billion was once again gutted, with P150 billion left unfunded and pushed to the UA.

The Department of Agrarian Reform, Department of Agriculture, Department of Health, Department of Education, and Department of Public Works and Highways received no funding for their international development projects in 2024.

The defunded projects included railways to decongest cities, flood control systems to protect communities, and agricultural programs to feed people.

These projects had signed loan agreements with the Japan International Cooperation Agency, Asian Development Bank, and the World Bank.

These foreign-assisted contracts carried sovereign guarantees or government pledges to pay, backed by the full faith and credit of the Republic of the Philippines.

By leaving these projects in limbo, taxpayer money was wasted on unused loan commitments and delayed flagship infrastructure.

These projects were transferred to the UA to create room for legislators’ pet projects tied to kickbacks, which were recently exposed in the allocable formula of the late DPWH undersecretary Cathy Cabral.

The entire fiscal disaster was allowed to occur when Marcos signed the budget without exercising his veto power.

“Either this was gross negligence or a deliberate sabotage of our development agenda. Both are equally unacceptable. Officials in government must be held accountable for this monumental blunder. The Filipino people should not pay the price for incompetence, greed, or both,” according to the lawmaker.

Marcos must be asked if the anomalous transfer of the key projects to the UA was ever raised during the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council meetings.

The Filipino people are devoid of leaders who honor commitments and protect the future, but they have a government replete with crooks who gamble away our future with their fiscal maneuverings.