Petitioners challenging the alleged pilferage of the national budget, particularly Davao City Representative Sid Ungab and health advocate Dr. Tony Leachon, are fervently hoping the Supreme Court will rule on the consolidated petitions before the State of the Nation Address (SoNA) on 27 July.

Budget season opens the following week. Between now and then, the Tribunal can prevent another attempt to manipulate the 2027 national budget since budget watchdogs expect massive public fund diversion for the 2028 presidential election agenda, or, simply put, vote-buying.

Everybody knows what happens once Congress starts marking up next year’s appropriations and accommodating slush funds.

The state health insurer, the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), received zero subsidy in 2025, an election year. It could have been the first time a major agency was allocated nothing.

Leachon filed his complaint over this after the Supreme Court, on 5 December, ruled unanimously, 15-0, that the transfer of P60 billion from PhilHealth, directed by Executive Secretary and then Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, was unconstitutional.

After the maneuver, the Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam) turned around and deprived the agency of a state subsidy in the following budget cycle.

Ungab described the current administration’s practice:

“The thieves in government have become utterly shameless. They were no longer satisfied with squandering billions of pesos; they even went so far as to cover up their crimes with the people’s own money.

“What’s even more painful is that they don’t have the slightest bit of conscience. They act as if nothing happened while ordinary citizens continue to suffer.”

Ungab, along with other individuals and groups, flagged blank items inserted into the budget that Congress could fill in later, away from public scrutiny.

Retired Associate Justice Antonio Carpio also raised concerns about the 2025 budget provision allowing the Department of Finance (DoF) to sweep “excess” funds from government-owned and controlled corporations into the National Treasury, which was behind the PhilHealth fund transfer.

He alleged that the provision allowing the DoF to transfer excess funds from GOCCs to the National Treasury was unconstitutional.

The mechanism called Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA), the now-familiar shadow budget that allows the executive and legislative branches to spend without the line-item accountability required of ordinary appropriations, is the focal point of the petitions.

The Supreme Court’s 26 April order consolidating the petitions was taken as a signal that the justices are considering the constitutional question of whether zero-budgeting an agency and inserting blank line items constitute the same unconstitutional act the Court had already condemned in December.

Budget hearings start in the last week of July and run into August. The 2027 budget is also an election budget, the last full appropriations cycle before voters go to the polls.

Leachon’s concern, expressed plainly, is that local government incentives have become the new vehicle for pork-barrel politics, dressing up patronage spending as development assistance timed to the campaign calendar.

The UA absorbs whatever does not survive line-item scrutiny, based on his reckoning.

The Supreme Court must preempt a scheming Congress before the bad habits resume.

The Court’s calendar gives Filipinos a test of whether the rule of law moves faster than the crooks in government who are already scheming for a major election sting operation.