By Beting Laygo Dolor, Contributing Editor
The recently revealed transfer of millions of pesos from the Office of the President (OP) to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) last year may have been unconstitutional.
This red flag was raised last week by former Senate presidents, Koko Pimentel and Franklin Drilon.
While both said they were only expressing an opinion, their word carries weight. Current Senate minority leader Pimentel is a bar topnotcher, while now-retired Drilon’s experience includes stints as Labor, Justice and Executive secretary. Before joining the government, Drilon was part of the ACCRA law office.
In the House, the Makabayan bloc said after its review, that the fund transfer should be deemed “illegal and unconstitutional.”
Under Philippine law, fund transfers from one department to another are not allowed as all government expenditures must be part of the approved budget for the year.
Compounding the issue was an earlier statement from then Supreme Court justice Lucas Bersamin that fund transfers were not allowed by law. However, as current executive secretary, he backtracked on his earlier statement by saying that the transfer of PHP125 million (about US$2.232 million) from the OP to the OVP in 2022 was legal.
It was actually the Commission on Audit that had flagged the OVP’s establishment of satellite offices in various regions last year. Funding for the satellite offices was the reason cited by Bersamin for the transfer.
However, it was later learned that Vice-president Sara Duterte had actually used the additional funding received by her office as her confidential intelligence fund.
The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) took the cudgels for the OP by categorically stating that there was no bypass of Congressional power with the transfer.
The chairman of the House Appropriations committee had received a letter from the DBM defending the transfer.
Budget Sec. Amenah Pangandaman told the House body that, “while it is understandable that, at the outset, the release of funds to the OVP may be perceived as a transfer, the same was not technically so, for such release was funded from the Contingent Fund” under last year’s budget.
It was Bersamin’s office that confirmed that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had authorized the release of PHP221.42 million to the OVP in 2022.
The Office of the Executive Secretary appeared to contradict itself when it stated that PHP125 million was intended for confidential funds but also said that the funds were to be used for the OVP’s “newly-created satellite offices.”
By definition, intelligence funds are not intended for capital expenditures, as the latter needs to be part of the approved national budget. Intelligence funds are mostly used for data gathering, which critics say is actually spying, which is under the purview of the police or the Armed Forces.
Pangandaman explained that the release came from the OP’s PHP7 billion contingent fund and was in support of the OVP’s “Good Governance Engagements and Social Services Projects.”
The Budget secretary clarified that the release of the funds could not be deemed as “an augmentation of transfer of funds” from the OP, citing a 2014 Supreme Court ruling penned by then Justice Bersamin which declared that such an act would be unconstitutional.
That ruling stated that the act of withdrawing unobligated allotments from implementing agencies, declaring the funds as savings, then transferring the same to offices outside the Executive department to fund projects not listed in the year’s budget was a bypass of Congressional power.
Pangandaman said the contingent fund is meant for “expenditures not anticipated during the preparation of the budget.”
Last week, Duterte had words with Sen. Risa Hontiveros when he asked her if she knew how the OVP should operate. Duterte later said she had “no respect” for the minority lawmaker.
