AS A former Chair of the Appropriations Committee of the House and as a member of Congress, I take it as my serious duty and responsibility to study and scrutinize the national budget. This is about the money of the people and we should leave no room for error, irregularity or malice in appropriating same.
And as I was studying the figures related to the unconstitutional issues of the 2025 General Appropriations Act or GAA last week, I also worked back to review the Bicameral Conference Committee Report which was sent to the individual emails of House members before the ratification of the said bicameral report.
I was shocked that there were several pages with blank amounts on certain expenditures of the signed Bicam Report. . This Bicameral Conference Committee Report constituted the final version of the reconciled separate versions by the House and the Senate. Meaning this is supposed to be the basis of the figures reflected in the GAA 2025 itself minus the President’s message and signature.
This signed Bicam Report is what we exposed as our duty and adherence to Transparency and Accountability during the podcast with former President Rodrigo Duterte, Atty Vic Rodriguez and Atty Martin Delgra at Basta Dabawenyo.
The reactions from Malacanang were off tangent. Both Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and President Bongbong Marcos were talking of the GAA which is a different document from what we were questioning, which was the Bicam Report.
They skirted the issue by asserting there were no blanks in the GAA2025. They labeled our revelation as “fake news” and the former president as “lying.”
However, no amount of evasion and distraction will cure the fatal defects of how the GAA2025 was enacted into law.
Belatedly, we also learned that as early as December 16, no less than the elder sister of the President, Sen Imee Marcos has strongly rejected signing the Bicam Report, it having in her own words “lack of documents and having blanks” in it.
The issue here is very clear - the blanks in the signed Bicam Report not the signed GAA2025. But in between the signing of these two vital public documents, the fundamental guide for our disbursement of public funds for this year, something went wrong. “Magicians” were at play.
There were persons or a group of people who filled up these blank items clearly shown in the signed Bicam Report. Who are they? Clearly, they usurped the sole power and responsibility of congress to appropriate public funds.
This is not just irregular, in the words of the former President who is a veteran prosecutor, “criminal.”
I say it is the sworn duty of both the President and the Executive Secretary to ferret out, unmask these criminals and make to account for their misrepresentation, usurpation of Congress and falsification of public documents.
They must act swiftly lest confidence in government will be eroded with conclusions that we are playing with and are squandering the people’s money.”
- Davao City 3rd District Representative Isidro Ungab
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