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Restoring its funding is the right step, but it must also serve as a warning. Disaster preparedness cannot be switched on only after lives are lost and communities destroyed. It is a moral obligation of governance.
When viewed together, the legal stalling at The Hague and the coordinated political pressure at home reveal a strategy designed not only to shield the former president from accountability. The Duterte camp appears to be buying time as part of a broader gambit aimed at weakening the Marcos administration and clearing space for a Sara Duterte takeover before the ICC can weigh the evidence against her father.
Filipinos are tired of leaders who demand trust yet refuse transparency, who promise accountability yet shield their own, who speak of readiness yet offer no vision beyond survival and spite. If Sara Duterte insists she is "ready," the public has every right to ask: ready for what — another round of secrecy, showmanship and selective outrage?
"The flood control projects worth billions and billions of pesos could have saved so many lives if it had gone to our public hospitals, to PhilHealth benefits. It could have saved so many young children from dying of malnutrition."
While Marcos appears sincere in getting to the bottom of the trillion-peso flood control scandal, his part in approving the questionable insertions in the budget and the release of funds for projects that turned out to be inexistent cannot be ignored. Perhaps the time is ripe for the president to acknowledge negligence and be forthright in admitting his faults.
In our struggles to overcome the severe problems and difficulties caused by a string of natural disasters, we should keenly observe how our leaders, from the barangay to the national government, have contributed to our sufferings or how they’re addressing our needs. Keep them in mind until the 2028 elections.
More than the flood control scandal, the SEC and PSE should be more concerned about individual investors who have been losing sleep for several months, worrying about their hard-earned money that was entrusted to brokerage firms that have gone astray.
It is crucial to keep in check that the appropriate cases are filed with sufficient material and testimonial evidence to ensure conviction and that court proceedings will not last years, or even decades.
Over the years, lawmakers have mastered the art of bastardizing the budget, the most important piece of legislation that Congress passes every year. Based on how they mangled the 2023 to 2025 budgets, it would appear that the present crop of legislators has outdone all past congresses in terms of the enormity of the amount and degree of shamelessness in abusing their power of the purse.
The first time I heard of the term budget insertions was about 30 years ago, during the Ramos administration. It referred to funding provisions for projects or programs identified by congressmen in the General Appropriations Bill. The insertions were over and above what was then called the Countrywide Development Fund.
