Innocent? Tell it to the Marines
A President who genuinely combed through P200 billion in flood control insertions found only P26 billion worth of rot because a full veto would have named names his own coalition needed protected.
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A President who genuinely combed through P200 billion in flood control insertions found only P26 billion worth of rot because a full veto would have named names his own coalition needed protected.
Was President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. merely careless with the nation’s money, or did he know exactly where it was going? The record says he can no longer claim ignorance.
In late 2024, economists and fiscal watchdogs begged Marcos to reject the 2025 national budget outright. Insertions totaling P200 billion had been stuffed into the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) flood control allocation. PhilHealth, meanwhile, got nothing.
The President delayed and had a photo taken with then Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, then Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, then Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, then Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan, and Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan showing them poring over line items, supposedly for 10 days.
He then vetoed P194 billion worth of items, only P26 billion of which were for the DPWH.
The other P168 billion sat in Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA), projects that were contingent on extra revenues.
A President who genuinely combed through P200 billion in flood control insertions found only P26 billion worth of rot because a full veto would have named names his own coalition needed protected.
Then there was the money trail the Supreme Court had referred to. The SC’s oral arguments and decision of 5 December 2025 centered on the transfer of excess GOCC (government-owned and controlled corporation) funds into the UA under Special Provision 1(d) of the 2024 GAA and DoF Circular No. 003-2024.
The combined sweep from GOCCs Philippine Health Insurance Corp. and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. totaled P167.23 billion. The court decision nullified the transfers and ordered the return of the funds.
The High Tribunal, hearing the consolidated petitions on the constitutionality of that maneuver, ordered the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to disclose where the funds actually went.
The answer was that more than half, or roughly P141.5 billion, landed at DPWH. Break that down further and 85 percent of it fell under what the government itself labeled the “President’s Priority Projects.”
Flood control alone accounted for 48 percent of that category, released under the signature of the President’s own budget chief and funneled overwhelmingly into the same sector now under criminal investigation.
Which brings us to Pangandaman. She resigned in November 2025, out of delicadeza supposedly, after fugitive lawmaker Zaldy Co alleged that she had told him Marcos had personally ordered P100 billion in insertions during the 2025 Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam).
No charges have been filed against Pangandaman, and in July 2026 Marcos appointed her chair and CEO of the Al-Amanah Islamic Bank, the country’s only state-run Islamic lender. Malacañang called it a vote of confidence, yet it was clear to all and sundry that it was a reward for her silence.
The President trusted her enough to hand her a bank chairmanship, even as she was the central witness against his own budget process.
So, incompetent or complicit? The honest answer is closer to the latter. The Constitution gives the President the line-item veto so that precisely ignorance is not a defense. Yet he signed it while he could strike out anything he chose.
When 88 percent of the flagged insertions survived his reviewt and when the survivors were funded through the same emergency mechanism his administration controlled, “I did not know” becomes a claim that requires the public to believe he is either lying or grossly derelict.
Both traits are indicting for a Chief Executive who flaunted a flagship bridge project in his 2024 State of the Nation Address (SoNA), only for that project to turn up unfunded, buried in the UA, months later.
The High Court has not yet ruled on whether the UA is even constitutional; oral arguments concluded in July 2026, and a decision remains pending. Malacañang’s defenders argue that a President cannot personally audit every peso in a P6.8-trillion budget, and the responsibility for insertions lies first with the legislators who wrote them.
The fiscal battle will matter far more when the 2027 budget, Marcos’ last full spending bill before the 2028 elections, and the one most vulnerable to election-year pork, reaches his desk.
If the pattern continues, the benefit of the doubt Filipinos have extended to the administration will run out, along with the patience of a public tired of the repeated deception.
