Cartoon By: Aaron Paul C. Caril
EDITORIAL
Fixing the ‘most corrupt budget’
After several public hearings purportedly in aid of legislation on the alleged misuse of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President, the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability has projected a public image as champions of good governance and accountability.
The filing of at least three impeachment charges against the Vice President in the House of Representatives speaks well of the Committee’s success in portraying the strongest contender for the President as a corrupt public official. As cases have been filed, we give the Vice President the benefit of the doubt as she defends herself both in the court of law and in the bar of public opinion — a test requiring her to cross the rubicon if only to survive in her political career.
But he who builds his success on the ruins of others only constructs a monument to his own disgrace, so to speak. While proposed legislations may be filed after the series of contempt and arrest orders issued to uncooperative resource persons during the Committee hearings, the House and Senate members cannot hide their corrupt practices behind the Vice President’s confidential fund mess. The whole of Congress is now placed in the spotlight as the controversial 2025 national budget has been fiercely criticized as the most corrupt in the country’s history, forcing Malacañan Palace to cancel the December 20 GAA signing “to allow more time for a rigorous and exhaustive review that will determine the course of the nation for the next year.”
Although what we see for now may be the tip of the iceberg, no less than the President’s sister, Senator Imee Marcos, hinted at the extent of the problem by calling the Executive Secretary and the Budget Secretary not to allow the President to sign the budget. The senator believes that the President’s line-item veto power cannot remedy the problems with the budget. It must be returned to Congress to correct its excesses, even at the risk of operating under a reenacted budget for the first few weeks of 2025.
In Belgica vs. Executive Secretary, the Supreme Court emphasized that any multifarious unconstitutional methods and mechanisms should never again be adopted in any system of governance, by any name or form, by any semblance or similarity, by any influence or effect. Disconcerting as it is to think that a system so constitutionally unsound has monumentally endured, the Court urges the people and its co-stewards in government to look forward with the optimism of change and the awareness of the past.
It only takes a stroke of a pen before the controversial budget becomes law. The President must now do what is legally and morally necessary.