EDITORIAL - Leadership by bad example

Malacañang washed its hands of the P500 million each in “leadership funds” that allegedly went to all senators in the previous 19th Congress.

Several senators who served in the 19th Congress also slammed the testimony of former public works secretary Manuel Bonoan, who told the Sandiganbayan’s Third Division last Wednesday that the chairpersons of key Senate committees could have received up to P1 billion each in leadership funds.

Bonoan was testifying in the malversation case filed against Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. over a P92.8-million non-existent or ghost flood control project in Pandi, Bulacan. Revilla chaired the Senate public works committee in the 19th Congress.

The Senate president at the time, Juan Miguel Zubiri, denied that he managed the list of senators’ pet projects to be covered by the leadership funds, which Bonoan said were allocated to “all” senators in 2024 for the national budget in 2025. Zubiri said this was the task of the Senate finance committee, at the time chaired by Sonny Angara, now the secretary of education.

Bonoan, who stressed that the allocations were not illegal per se, said the P1 billion for Revilla was on top of P7.4 billion in congressional insertions of the former senator.

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who was not part of the 19th Congress, described the leadership fund as yet another version of the pork barrel, which the Supreme Court had struck down as unconstitutional.

Lawmakers, however, have kept finding ways of skirting the SC prohibition against lump sum appropriations and the earmarking of projects for funding after the General Appropriations Act or GAA has been signed into law.

Budget watchers have pointed to the unprogrammed appropriations as the latest incarnation of the pork barrel. Unprogrammed appropriations have jumped exponentially since the Duterte administration, peaking in last year’s GAA.

For this year, unprogrammed appropriations remain intact, although drastically trimmed from 2025 amid the corruption scandal that erupted over budgeting anomalies related to the flood control and public works mess.

Budget watchers have pointed to other variations of pork barrel allocations, among them the Medical Assistance for Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients as well as the ever-growing Local Government Support Fund – a lump sum appropriation that was allocated a record-high P57.87 billion in this year’s GAA.

These continuing efforts to go around a Supreme Court prohibition make lawmakers’ avowed commitment to budget transparency and fiscal prudence mere lip service.

It’s leadership by bad example.