Top-secret bananas

Top-secret bananas | Daily Tribune

The House gathered the nation once and announced, very proudly, that it has discovered a rule: Confidential funds are allowed only if an office has an intelligence or covert operational mandate. This rule swung an axe straight at the Vice President. No grace, except Mary Grace Piattos.

Lawmakers were extremely clear: This had nothing to do with the veep being Sara Duterte. Please. Do not insult them. Only the purest principle ever to walk the halls of government: “No intelligence function. No secrecy.” Boom. Standing ovation. Opposition and supermajority probably high-fived.

The OVP? Civilian executive office. DepEd: civilian executive office.

Impeached. Somewhere, a violin played. For a beautiful, historically inaccurate moment, the House looked like it made democracy feel safer.

Let’s walk. Slowly. Together. Because the rule developed amnesia. The Office of the President is also a civilian executive office. It does not have a statutory covert operational mandate.

It does not plant bugs or recruit assets in the alleys. Or be duty-bound to wiretap Sara. Bongbong is not James Bond. (James Budget, maybe.) He is not meant to say, “The mission is compromised.” He says, “Approved.” That’s the turf.

The Office of the President: the description is literally a public office.

Intelligence is what agencies do — the ones who actually take risks, get shot at, and operate in the dark so the likes of Bongbong can operate in the light.

They say it is about national security. From what? Questions? Every time someone asks the President, “Why?” suddenly what — sirens? Red lights? Very secure country we have here, ladies and gentlemen. Collapses under curiosity.

If China sneezes, the Navy should have the money. Terrorists, the police show up; NICA, Immigration, the NBI.

Bongbong receives intelligence. That does not make his office an intelligence agency. Otherwise, every Cabinet secretary would qualify for secret funds. “Top-secret bananas.” Ridiculous. The most classified operation: confidential rice.

The P20-rice promise was never means-tested, for-select-areas-only, limited quantities, “while supplies last.” The promise was universal: cheap rice for everyone.

Turns out P20 rice exists only for the poorest, in tiny amounts, in special locations, under special rules, during special hours. It is a raffle.

If this is success, no wonder it is confidential. If you underdeliver this badly, you would hide it, too.

And now more intelligence funds for what? Locating the rest of the P20 rice because the public has been searching for it for years?

If rice — rice! — has to be rationed, imagine what else needs secrecy to survive? Who knows? Maybe they installed a secret elevator in Malacañang? A bat cave?

You ask Claire, she will bark at you, very serious: “Confidential.” Incredible answer.

Yet here we are. P4.5 billion in secret funds. Just landed. President’s desk. Lion’s share. More than double what the soldiers get, the agencies doing spy stuff; the same intelligence allowance the Office of the President enjoyed every year long since.

Mr. President, you can defend your “trust me” cash forever. Congress, implicated in the biggest budget scandal in our history, will help. Claire will spin. And every word will dig the hole deeper because the public is not so much demanding explanations as it is demanding restraint.

You still reel from the largest corruption scandal tied to your name. Your ratings are at an all-time low. You responded forcefully. Jail. Courtesy resignations. Very serious faces. People noticed — some even believed it.

Confidential funds, while not illegal, contradict the accountability argument you just made. You want trust without eye contact. When trust is collapsing, the last thing a President should do is ask for more secrecy.

The only intelligence involved here is figuring out how to hide the money. If you cannot explain why you need it, you definitely should not get it.