By BAYAN Chairperson and former Bayan Muna representative Teddy Casiño
December 10, 2024
The latest findings of the Commission on Audit (COA) shows it is high time to end the Duterte legacy of bloated Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIFs).
The numbers speak for themselves: the Office of the President (OP) spent P4.56B in CIFs in 2023, surpassing all the agencies primarily tasked with national defense and security combined. More shockingly, even the Office of the Vice President, with no mandate to conduct intelligence or security operations, disbursed P375M in confidential funds, outspending the combined allocations of the Department of National Defense, the National Security Council, and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency.
By their very nature, CIFs are the most untransparent and therefore most easily abused of all public spending. The staggering increase in its use by the OP is a legacy of the Duterte presidency, where CIF allocations ballooned exponentially from 500 million when he assumed office in 2016, increasing to 2.5 billion in 2017 and reaching a staggering 4.5 billion annually by the second half of his term.
The House Quad Committee investigations point to Duterte’s CIFs as a possible source of funding for his failed drug war and death squad operations.
Pres. Bongbong Marcos continued Duterte’s legacy of bloated CIFs and even shared the bounty with Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte. He provided her P125M of her own confidential funds in 2022 and P650M in 2023 to do as she pleased. We now know where that went.
The bicameral conference committee on the 2025 budget should immediately act to defund the OP’s bloated CIF allocation. For starters, it can revert the OP’s CIF budget to pre-Duterte levels. It should also add special provisions in the 2025 General Appropriations Act ensuring stricter parameters and greater transparency in the use of CIFs, like disallowing mere certifications as a way of liquidating funds, or requiring COA to conduct regular special audits for submission to Congress for review.
Meanwhile, Congress should investigate where the bloated CIF spending of the President went from the time of Duterte up to Marcos. Transparency and accountability does not stop with the OVP. It goes all the way to the top.
Dapat tanggalin na ang ganitong sikretong pondo sa mga opisinang hindi kailangan nito. Ipaubaya ang intelligence at security operations sa mga ahensyang maalam at may mandato para dito.
We cannot allow such discretionary funds to be treated as a personal piggy bank by those in power. Congress must end this culture of fiscal impunity and protect the people’s taxes from being misused.#
