đź“· ATTY. NERI COLMENARES
Bayan Muna Chairman Neri Colmenares today asserted that the petition against the release to and the spending of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President (OVP) violates the Constitution as Bayan Muna reiterates its demand that VP Sara Duterte return the Php 125 million she spent in 11 days.
“Our petition to challenge the constitutionality of the allocation of Php 125 million confidential fund to the OVP and VP Sara Duterte’s spending of this huge amount of public funds in just 11 days is very strong. Art. VI Sec. 29 (1) of the Constitution states that no money shall be spent “except in pursuance of an appropriation made by law”. There was no confidential fund for the OVP in the 2022 General Appropriations Act (GAA), therefore any transfer to the OVP and spending of confidential funds violates the Constitution”, said Bayan Muna Chairman Neri Colmenares who was one of the petitioners in the case of ACT Teachers vs. Bersamin in GR 270599.
“The claim of VP Duterte that there is no justiciable controversy because our petition was a “mere speculation” is absurd. Php 125 million of tax payers money were actually spent by VP Duterte even if the national budget did not actually allow it, and the claim of tax payers against this misuse of public funds are not mere speculations but based on official records and even public admissions by the respondents”, he said
“The Commission on Audit (COA) publicly promised to conduct special audit of these confidential funds last year. We now ask COA where this Audit Report is as we demand that COA bares the report to the public. Taxpayers have the right to know how their money was spent and COA has the duty to audit all confidential funds given to civilian agencies and officials not only during the previous administration but even in the current administration”, said the former Bayan Muna solon who has been demanding the abolition of confidential funds since the time of Pres. Gloria Arroyo.
“COA should order these civilian bureaucrats to return their confidential funds if they violated government rules such as Joint Circular 2015-01. Any confidential fund disbursement without the “Physical and Financial Plan indicating the proposed amount allocated for each program, activity, and project” and the “supporting document of payments” and receipts as required by Circular 2015-01 must be disallowed. COA cannot claim that they have no authority to audit these funds as Sec. 6.3.4 of the Circular empowers the COA, to “conduct post audit of the liquidations of disbursements from the cash advances for the Confidential Funds”.
Colmenares reiterated Bayan Muna’s call for Pres. Marcos to institute budget reforms and curb corruption in government when he submits the budget for 2025. “We demand an end to confidential funds in the budget and the audit of all intelligence funds to any government office as these are still public funds that are not exempted from auditing scrutiny. These billions in confidential funds could have been spent on education, free medicine, health services and other social services for the people instead of being used in public expenditures which COA does not audit.
“We ask both the House and the Senate to ensure transparency and the auditing of all public expenditures as we cannot afford to waste government resources in the midst of debilitating debts and budget deficits. We demand that Pres. Marcos depart from the untransparent traditional budgeting process and institute budget reforms to assure the people that the Marcos administration does not tolerate corruption” ended Colmenares.
