Bersamin lashes out at House over budget
For the first time under President Marcos, the executive branch on Saturday openly lashed out against the House of Representatives for supposedly trying to deflect blame for corruption and failures in the budget process.
In a short but strongly worded statement, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin slammed what he called “recent spins from certain members of the House who are thereby attempting to shift the blame for their own corruption and failures onto the Executive branch.”
“The members of the Cabinet would not tolerate any attack on the integrity and reputation of the executive branch and any effort to hold the budget process hostage by political theatrics,” Bersamin said.
“All our investigations into the anomalies will be futile if the sources of corruption remain unchecked. Hence, we urge the House of Representatives to heed the demand of the people for full accountability: Clean your house first!”
The executive secretary has been historically informally called the “little president” for being the “first among equals” in the President’s official family and for the central role it plays in running Malacañang.
Neither Bersamin nor Malacañang elaborated on his statement, which came across as a sudden flare-up following what may be behind-the-scenes disputes between the House led by the President’s cousin, Speaker Martin Romualdez, and the Palace.
‘Return’ call withdrawn
There was no immediate reaction from the House leadership to Bersamin’s statement.
The executive secretary’s statement follows a now-ditched proposal by House party leaders led by Deputy Speaker and Antipolo Rep. Ronaldo Puno of the National Unity Party to return the National Expenditure Program (NEP) back to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) due to several problematic provisions that remained in the proposal.
The NEP is prepared by the Executive branch, specifically the DBM, and is the blueprint for next year’s government expenditures. It is submitted to Congress to serve as the basis for the General Appropriations Bill, which originates in the House, before it is passed by the entire Congress and signed into law by the President as the General Appropriations Act.
Flood project inquiries
In recommending to Romualdez that the NEP be returned, Puno said that the House “cannot begin deliberations on this national budget and we owe it to all of you that this is allocated properly, transparently, free of corruption.”
“We believe that at this point the NEP submitted by the DBM falls short of that standard,” he added.
The NEP came as both the House and Senate opened separate inquiries into the billions of pesos lost in nonexistent or substandard corruption-tainted flood control projects largely attributed to collusion between some government officials, including some members of congress, and private contractors.
The President himself disclosed that only 15 out of over 2,000 public works contractors accounted for more than P100 billion worth of flood control projects, or about 18 percent of the P545 billion spent for flood mitigation from 2022 to 2025.
The proposal to return the NEP to Malacañang, announced last Wednesday, followed revelations by Senators Sherwin Gatchalian, Erwin Tulfo and Panfilo Lacson that several line items in the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) proposed P881.6-million budget for 2026 were either redundant, had the same amounts, or were allocated for projects that were already deemed completed.
Avoiding suspicions
Aware that this would mean several amendments to the DPWH budget through error corrections, Puno said they wanted to avoid raising suspicions that the House itself was doing irregular realignments.
On Thursday, however, Palawan Rep. Jose Alvarez of the Nationalist Peoples’ Coalition said his party leaders decided to drop the proposal to return the NEP after Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon and Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman themselves committed to fix the budget as ordered by Mr. Marcos.
This was confirmed by House appropriations committee chair and Nueva Ecija Rep. Mikaela Suansing during the DPWH budget briefing last Friday, where they gave Dizon seven days to overhaul the agency’s appropriations.
