By Bagong Alyansang Makabayan
The Malacañang-sponsored bicameral conference confirms the direct involvement of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in budget deliberations despite the absurd claim that the president is “blameless” in the flood control and infrastructure corruption scandals.
That Marcos Jr. can order Congress on how it should conduct the bicam is proof that the president has a leading if not the most decisive role in drafting the national budget.
He is involved in every step of the budget process, and his recent pronouncement about the bicam underscores his absolute power on how the budget will be finalized.
The president’s control over the budget means he is aware of the suspicious and anonalous projects inserted by his allies in both chambers of Congress, which he later approved for release. He also made sure that pork barrel projects embedded in unprogrammed appropriations will be added in the national budget.
Organizing the bicam is not supposedly part of Marcos Jr.’s duties as chief executive. But he is desperate in trying to appease public anger against large-scale corruption that is why he wanted to claim that the budget process will be transparent. In the end, he only exposed himself as the real operator calling the shots in the budget process and the mastermind of the pork barrel insertions.
Marcos Jr. should therefore be made accountable for widespread corruption and turning the budget into one big ATM for bureaucrat capitalists like him.