At about this time last year, during a Davao City assembly, former President Rodrigo Duterte and the city’s Rep. Sid Ungab led a group in exposing the perversion of the national budget since 2023, the first full year of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s term.

The exposé was naturally dismissed as Duterte noise since the rift between the President Marcos and Vice President Sara Duterte was then reaching the boiling point.

Stripped of recriminations, the revelation sparked a train of events that likely led to the surrender of Duterte to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face crimes against humanity charges and, later, President Marcos’ blowing the lid off the kickback-ridden anti-flood undertakings, which is slowly but surely leading to the halls of Malacañang.

During the Duterte congregation in Davao, aired through a podcast, the existence of blank items in the Bicameral Conference Committee report on the 2025 General Appropriations Bill was revealed.

This opened a Pandora’s box of revelations, which implicated the highest officials of the land.

Ungab recounted that during a dinner meeting on 18 January 2025, he showed the former president, a seasoned prosecutor, the blank items buried in the bicam report.

He recalled that Duterte was shocked and immediately decided to expose the racket.

“The public needs to know about this tonight,” Mr. Duterte told Ungab.

He indicated that the bicam’s manipulation of the 2025 national budget “was just the beginning.”

It turned out that the blank items opened up a pathway toward more revelations that Ungab said exposed the systematic looting of public funds.

Special laws were illegally amended without going through the legislative process.

These laws included Republic Act 11239 or the Motor Vehicle User’s Charge (Special Road Fund); Republic Act 8718 or the Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund; Republic Act 8800, the Remedies Fund under the Safeguard Measures Act; Republic Act 10654, the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Fisheries Management Fund; Republic Act 9335, the Rewards and Incentives Fund under the Attrition Act of 2005; Republic Act 10929, the Spectrum Users Charge Fund for Free Internet Access in Public Places;

Republic Act 9514, the Bureau of Fire Protection Fire Code; Presidential Decree 1529, the Land Registration Fees and Collections; Republic Act 9165, the Dangerous Drugs Act funds; Republic Act 7356, the National Endowment Fund for Culture and the Arts; Republic Act 11363, the Philippine Space Agency funds; Presidential Decree 1234, PD 1854, and RA 1145 or Coconut Development Fund and Coconut Consumers Stabilization Fund.

Laws that required the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. to reserve funds exclusively for health care, including the Sin Tax law, were violated.

The maneuvers resulted in the infrastructure budget overtaking the education sector budget; P74 billion earmarked for PhilHealth vanished; major flood control projects were gutted and replaced with ghost projects; foreign-assisted projects were relegated to the UA; and billions of pesos were redirected to pet projects that were not found in any master plan.

“They got caught. They admitted it. Now they’re scrambling for cover,” Ungab crowed.

He cited former House Appropriations chairperson Zaldy Co as confirming the blank items in his recorded video.

Former senior appropriations vice chairperson Stella Quimbo admitted they existed, then tried to blame the House technical staff, despite the absence of a legal provision allowing such “corrections.”

Filipinos paid the price for the massive theft of public funds through the national budget.

Families lost homes to floods that could have been prevented; patients couldn’t access healthcare because P74 billion disappeared; infrastructure promised to communities never materialized; taxes were stolen before the eyes of the public.

By January 2026, Filipinos knew exactly how their money was stolen. Yet even as all three branches of government conducted investigations and filed charges, justice remains a mirage, with the architects of the wholesale plunder of the 2025 national budget walking free.

In the Philippine context, justice exists only when citizens fight for it and deny crooks the comfort of impunity.