The confidential intelligence funds that Senate Minority Leader Koko Pimentel is hollering about is worth billions of pesos coming from our taxes, which is why we must show our outrage for such allocations particularly to national offices that have nothing to do with law and order and national security.
We have been borrowing left and right and our debt burden is already past our necks, so to speak, with our grandchildren having to pay for it in their time.
Yet our legislators—most if not all of them—are taking the liberty to allocate such huge sums to the two top positions of the land in the hope that in the near future they get favors or positions or projects from the two heads of offices.
Everything about them and for them is personal, never mind if the people suffer in paying for such careless budget allocation so long as they snuggle themselves very near the president and vice president, in exchange for some future transactions.
We ought to be outraged because we are facing uncontrolled inflation surges and a further tightening of our belts in the coming months, just to suit the salivating legislators who would wiggle themselves to get part of these funds for their personal use (district or family). Why because these funds are not subject to accounting and public disclosure.
In the meantime, let us watch how the president and vice president would use such funds for travel, parties and other personal luxuries, at our expense. See just how victorious their smiles were when their CIFs breezed through both chambers?
History will be kinder to Pimentel and fellow oppositionist Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who may seem to be losing their fight now against the removal of P500 million for the Office of the Vice President and P150 million for the Department of Education, both of which are the offices of Sara Duterte, daughter of former President Duterte. Another P19.2 million of CIF is being allotted to the Office of the Solicitor General.
He questioned the “enormous amounts” being allotted for the CIFs in next year’s budget, even when the Marcos administration has been harping on a government policy to “exercise prudent macroeconomic and fiscal management in prioritizing expenditures.”
Of the total P9.3-billion CIF allocation, P4.5 billion is set to go to the Office of the President (OP). He had warned that these funds were “prone to abuse and discretion.”
He said that while he agreed that some of the government’s security-related agencies such as the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police deserved to get CIFs, such justification could not apply to the OVP, DepEd and OSG.
Pimentel said the public must oppose such massive allocations as the country is deep in debt and people are already so burdened with inflation and lack of job opportunities.
Pimentel said the ordinary Filipino taxpayers should also question the propriety of appropriating confidential and intelligence funds to agencies with no clear mandate to use them. “This is the time our people should now take part, first by understanding what confidential funds are,” he added.
In the House, Rep. Edcel Lagman has called for a purge of “unnecessary, excessive” CIFs, saying that “no stretch of the imagination or flexibility of logic” could justify P9.3 billion for confidential and intelligence spending by several government agencies. They are shrouded in mystery and can breed corruption, Lagman said.
The government’s premier intelligence unit, the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency will get P141 million in intelligence funds, which is P9 million less than the proposed confidential fund for DepEd.
Pimentel said the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), which would need funds for surveillance to combat online fraud, was not given any CIF.