The 2025 National Budget, crafted by the secretive bicameral conference committee of Congress, reeks of corruption. Secretive in its deliberations, what is clear to the public is that not one of the participating legislators, who are incognito to the people, has fully disclosed the important items of the budget.
What the people can see and think is that “the bicameral committee has been hiding budget items that should not be there. For example, why provide confidential intelligence funds for government agencies that are not officially tasked with national security matters.”
The Filipino people have been alarmed with VP Sara Duterte’s spending the people’s money, budgeted as “confidential intelligence funds,” amounting to P125 million in 11 days, with no justification.
What has been revealed to the public via the media live-streamed Congress Quad committee investigation is that there is no existing Filipino by the name of “Mary Grace Piattos.” And there were several other fictitious names who were supposed to have acknowledged receiving thousands of the people’s money to spend for some vague VP Office or DepEd projects.
For this blatant act of apparent robbery of the people’s money, many people’s organizations, Church leaders, retired military officers, party-list groups, and concerned citizens have expressed their righteous indignation, with 3 impeachment complaints filed against VP Sarah Duterte.
Thus, mass mobilizations not only for the impeachment of VP Sarah Duterte, but also for correction/revision/pro-people improvement of the 2025 national budget. For weeks now, the people have been crying for the restoration of adequate budgets for the DepEd and for PhilHealth.
Education, in fact, has to have the highest priority in the budget allocation of the people’s money, as the Constitution provides. Education has been severely neglected by the Duterte regime – the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) Year 2 report said that almost 25,000 schools under the DepEd have no fully designated principals. This is not to mention that there has been for years now the need for 165,000 classrooms and other necessary facilities or accessories for effective teaching and learning.
No wonder lack of support for the education of children has left the country’s education system much below international standards.
Relatedly, healthcare has been neglected, at the expense of more than 60 million Filipinos wallowing in poverty. Hospitals and their medical staff must be provided with adequate funding to improve the overall health system of the country. Understandably, SocMed has been rife with calls for the accountability not only for VP Sarah Duterte’s possible criminal actions, but also for the accountabilities for the crimes committed by others.
Foremost among these guilty personalities is Sara’s father, former president Rodrigo Roa Duterte, for his crimes against humanity. Also included in this call for accountability for committing this crime of killing spree (estimated to number more than 30,000 victims by human rights groups) were her brothers Rep. Polong and Mayor Baste, Sen. Bong Go, Sen. Bato de la Rosa, and some military and police generals. It must be mentioned too, that current president, Bongbong Marcos is being called to account for the continuing EJKs and harassments, illegal arrests and killings of red-tagged activists, courtesy of the notorious NTF-ELCAC.
The country, indeed, is in a big mess, since 2016. Millions of prohibited drugs are still being marketed nationwide. It looks like the former president and his family, with the apparent support of some officers of the PNP, are still in control, as the Quad committee hearings have shown. Worse, poverty still stalks the majority of Filipinos, as they have been wishing for the sale of P20/kg of rice, among other staple food items to keep them healthy and at least survive. Why are the China vessels still plying in our WPS? When will President Bongbong Marcos and her VP Sarah Duterte stop these sufferings of the people?
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