President to Cabinet over House row: Cool it
President Marcos called for calm in his Cabinet on Sunday, a day after Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin, in a strongly worded statement, called out some members of the House of Representatives for supposedly trying to deflect blame for corruption and failures in the budget process to the executive branch.
“I hope lumamig na yung mga ulo ninyo (I hope you all have cooler heads by now),” Mr. Marcos said, eliciting laughter from the Cabinet secretaries and other officials at Villamor Air Base in Pasay City, who were there to send him off to Cambodia for a three-day state visit until Sept. 9.
“But I will have to just say that I perfectly understand why you are feeling a little unjustly beleaguered,” he added.
Bersamin, whom the President earlier designated as government caretaker along with Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla and Agrarian Reform Secretary Conrado Estrella III, later told reporters that Malacañang was unfazed by the allegations thrown by some members of the House, which is controlled by a supermajority led by the President’s cousin, Speaker Martin Romualdez.
According to Bersamin, his statement defending the Cabinet was a “natural mechanism for saying that ‘Do not judge us; judge yourself first.’”
“Of course, we are not comfortable with it because the executive is put in a bad light. So we had this consensus to come out with a unified statement,” he said.
‘Unprecedented move’
“We did not provoke anybody, but we just said that we are objecting to the announced objective of returning the National Expenditure Program [NEP] to us,” he added.
“That should not happen,” Bersamin said, describing the move as “unprecedented and not in the constitutional order.”
His sharp rebuke of the House on Saturday was prompted by a now-abandoned plan by House leaders led by Deputy Speaker and Antipolo Rep. Ronaldo Puno to return the 2026 NEP to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) due to several problematic provisions.
This was after some lawmakers observed that several line items in the proposed P881.6-million budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) for 2026 were either redundant, duplicated or allocated for projects that were already deemed completed.
The DPWH budget has come under close scrutiny after Congress, following an exposé by the President, began investigating the billions of pesos lost to corruption over the past years as some government officials, including some lawmakers and private contractors, colluded in the implementation of flood control projects that turned out to be nonexistent or substandard.
In response, President Marcos directed the DBM and DPWH to correct the problematic line items in the latter’s budget.
His order prompted Puno and the other House leaders to drop the proposal to send back the NEP to the DBM.
‘Blatant hypocrisy’
On Sunday, the Makabayan bloc called out the Palace for its “blatant hypocrisy” and for deflecting the responsibility for “widespread corruption” in government.
“Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin’s statement defending the Marcos Cabinet while attacking members of the House of Representatives is nothing more than the pot calling the kettle black,” ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio and Kabataan Rep. Renee Louise Co said.
“The truth is that corruption has become worse under the Marcos administration, from questionable infrastructure projects to bloated budgets that serve the interests of the ruling elite rather than the Filipino people,” they added.
The Center for People Empowerment in Governance echoed a similar sentiment, saying that President Marcos “remains principally accountable for the worsening corruption in the government.”
“The ongoing word war between Malacañang and the House of Representatives over the [DPWH budget] is nothing more than a clash among reactionary elites over the control of public funds,” CenPEG said.
Before his departure for Cambodia, the President said that three members will make up the independent commission to investigate the DPWH’s anomalous flood projects.
All three, he said in the latest episode of his podcast on Sunday, will not be connected to the government to shield them from any interference from any government official, including those from agencies under scrutiny for corruption allegations.
“I cannot divulge yet the personalities who will be part of the independent commission. I do not want to preempt the actual announcement because it is not yet final. But they will be revealed very soon,” Mr. Marcos said.
EO to be signed
The executive order establishing the independent body is just awaiting the President’s signature, Bersamin told reporters at Villamor Air Base.
“We expect that in its final form, the executive order will be welcomed by the people because that is what we are doing, everything is for the people,” he said.
During the President’s state visit to Cambodia, he is scheduled to hold discussions with Cambodian business leaders to further strengthen trade and investment relations between Manila and Phnom Penh.
Also expected to be taken up are steps to stop human trafficking in Cambodia, following the rescue of dozens of Filipinos from scam hubs there. —WITH A REPORT FROM GILLIAN VILLANUEVA
