GAA gang must admit defeat

Public pressure is mounting on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration to respect the Supreme Court’s (SC) ruling instead of challenging it through a motion for reconsideration.

Filed on Marcos’ orders, the motion appears aimed at preserving budgetary practices the Court has declared unconstitutional, mafioso methods carried over into the administration’s proposed 2027 National Expenditure Program.

The SC ruled the 2024 and 2025 General Appropriations Acts (GAA) unconstitutional because Congress increased spending beyond the President’s recommended amounts. In the 2024 budget alone, Congress added P449.5 billion to the Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA). The Court also struck down key provisions governing UA in the 2026 national budget.

The SC ruling has sparked a debate in Congress over what to do with the pork-riddled 2027 budget proposal: return it to the House or have the Senate painstakingly fix it. Senator JV Ejercito, chair of the Senate finance committee, has vowed to strike down all pork insertions in the House General Appropriations Bill.

The Supreme Court has done this before, and the administration should remember it. In its 2013 decision striking down the Priority Development Assistance Fund, the Court averred that the Constitution does not allow legislators to control the public’s money after the budget had been passed.

The lesson of that landmark ruling was that the GAA Mafia could not bring back the banned practice by giving it a new name.

This is what makes the recent motion for reconsideration so troubling. An administration confident in the integrity of its budget should be eager to account for every peso and let the public judge for itself whether anything was amiss.

Instead, by deploying its lawyers to defend practices the SC had already declared unconstitutional, the administration only fuels suspicion that the plundering machinery that has operated since the start of Marcos’ presidency remains entrenched, untouchable and impervious to accountability.

The timing makes the matter worse. Filipinos are angry about corruption, particularly after the flood control scandal showed how public funds can disappear into projects that protect no one from floods.

Those who have watched this saga unfold have little patience for arguments that the very safeguards meant to prevent abuse should now be weakened.

When citizens ask where their taxes went, the government owes them answers, not a petition asking the Supreme Court to loosen its restraints.

The President can still propose a budget, Congress can still scrutinize and amend it, and standby funds can still be maintained, provided all are exercised within the limits imposed by the Constitution.

Accountability is not an obstacle to governance; it is what makes it legitimate.

The ruling removes only the freedom to spend without checks, a freedom the government never had.

The better path is therefore plain. The President should withdraw his instruction to seek reconsideration, accept the decision as final and rewrite the 2027 budget to follow the Court’s guidance.

He should also give the public a full accounting of how the UAs were released and spent in past years so that trust can be rebuilt on facts, not promises.

The national budget belongs to the people, not to the officials entrusted with managing it, much less to those who exploit it for their own benefit.

A leader who genuinely holds this belief would not fight the High Tribunal to preserve control over public funds.

Instead, he would welcome the ruling as an opportunity to prove that taxpayer money can be managed transparently, honestly and in strict accordance with the law.

When the highest court finds that the budget was crafted the wrong way, the proper response is to do it the right way, not to argue that the wrong way was acceptable.

Public office is not a license to plunder, and the national budget is not a gang’s personal war chest.

“Mahiya naman kayo” (Shame on you), to the Mafia boss and his cohorts who insist on defending the old, discredited practices that allowed corruption to thrive.