President’s billions: We must demand Transparency

In a democracy, the people’s money is sacred. Every peso of the national budget represents the taxpayers’ trust that it would be spent for the public good. Yet recent revelations about the proposed 2027 national budget paint a troubling picture.

There is the P180-billion insertion of 6,212 new infrastructure projects concentrated in the districts of key House leaders, while opposition-aligned areas received crumbs. This is not budgeting; it is pork-barrel politics disguised as public works.

Rep. Antonio Tinio’s review exposed the ugly arithmetic. The Ilocos Norte 1st District Engineering Office — serving the district of House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, the President’s son — received the single largest net increase of P4.38 billion.

Meanwhile, Davao City, the Vice President’s bailiwick, saw its engineering offices allotted a mere P40 million each, among the lowest in the country. The pattern is unmistakable — reward allies, punish foes. As Tinio put it, “the pork barrel system as a carrot-and-stick is very much alive and kicking.”

But the infrastructure insertions are only half the scandal. The other half concerns the Office of the President’s confidential and intelligence funds (CIF).

President Marcos Jr. has proposed P4.56 billion in CIF for 2027 alone. Since 2023, the Office of the President has reportedly spent over P18.2 billion in confidential funds. Yet the public has no idea where the money went. No detailed accomplishment reports. No itemized breakdowns. Just assurances of “transparency” that ring hollow when the Senate impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte is precisely about her own questionable use of CIF.

Herein lies the hypocrisy. The same lawmakers and officials who demand accountability from the Vice President refuse to apply the same scrutiny to the President.

When the House appropriations committee terminated the OP’s budget briefing in less than an hour as a “parliamentary courtesy,” it effectively shut down the people’s right to know. Why the double standard?

If confidential funds are so vital and so clean, why not open the books? If the Commission on Audit’s unmodified opinion is proof of propriety, look where that led when the Vice President’s defenders used the same reasoning.

The people must call out President Marcos. Not out of partisan spite, but out of a democratic duty. The Constitution mandates that agencies with CIF submit quarterly accomplishment reports. That is not a suggestion; it is a legal obligation.

Transparency cannot be selective. If the President expects the nation to trust him with P4.56 billion annually — money that could build thousands of classrooms, buy medicines for public hospitals, and fund social protection — he must show exactly how it was spent. Otherwise, “transparency” becomes mere rhetoric, and “public service” becomes a cover for patronage.

We, the people, pay taxes. We have the right to ask: whose districts were fattened, and at whose expense? Whose projects were funded, and whose were forsaken? And most urgently: where did the President’s billions go?

Congress must abolish the tradition of parliamentary courtesy during budget hearings. The minority must be allowed to interpellate. The full list of 6,212 new projects must be published. And the President must release the OP’s confidential fund accomplishment reports from 2023 to 2026.

The Vice President is being questioned in an impeachment court. Fair enough. But justice cannot be one-sided. If Sara Duterte must explain her confidential funds, then Ferdinand Marcos Jr. must explain his. The people deserve no less. After all, it is not the President’s money. It is ours.