SENATE Finance committee chairman Juan Edgardo Angara is “open” to the clamor to scrutinize the multibillion-peso confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) for certain agencies and possibly realign them to disaster response and other priorities, but stressed that “all senators must be consulted” on the matter.
This, as two more lawmakers, Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and former Senate President Franklin Drilon, weighed in on the issue.
In an interview with DWIZ at the weekend, Angara also said he is confident that, at the rate the plenary has been deliberating on individual agency budgets for the 2023 General Appropriations Bill (GAB), the timeline earlier laid down by the Senate leadership will be met.
As stated by Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri earlier, the November 21 deadline for approving on second and third reading the P5.628-trillion GAB by November 21 can be met.
He noted that the senators have been working nonstop on vetting agency budgets, and pointed out to DWIZ, “last Thursday (November 10), we worked 16 hours.”
Regarding the CIFs, Angara said the agencies whose 2023 CIFs were flagged already had such confidential and intelligence funds earlier, adding partly in Filipino that for the Office of the President, for instance, “it was used in [then President Rodrigo] Duterte’s time” and that, to some extent, “it helped boost peace and order.”
When DWIZ host Cely Ortega Bueno pointed out that the issue also being raised is the magnitude of such funds, he conceded this but said that “there are limitations” under the law as to how CIF can be used by the agencies.
The CIFs that drew attention in the 2023 budget bill are those for the Office of the Vice President, the Department of Education and the Office of the Solicitor General.
Koko’s advocacy
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Koko Pimentel III has been leading the campaign to remove or at least reduce the CIFs, given the sparse funds left for other socioeconomic priorities and the huge demand for disaster response.
At the weekend, Pimentel’s predecessor as Minority leader, former Sen. Franklin M. Drilon, called for a closer scrutiny of the Marcos administration’s P9.3 billion intelligence and confidential funds, saying the continued use of the CIFs undermines transparency, a basic principle of good governance.
“I urge Congress to look at this very carefully. The basic rule is transparency. Hence, each agency should justify why it has to unfollow this rule through the use of the CIFs,” stressed Drilon in a radio interview.
“Let’s not neglect this. If we don’t pay attention to it, it will grow even larger. That was my experience in my 24 years in the Senate. It is Congress’s duty to examine the budget and set it aright [when needed],” Drilon said, partly in Filipino.
CIFs, according to Drilon, do not undergo the regular auditing by the Commission on Audit as the liquidation of the billion-peso funds is through a closed envelope system, which means the funds are beyond the scrutiny of the public.
The former Senate President expressed dismay at what appears to be a standard practice in government today where practically every agency in the government is involving itself in intelligence gathering.
Drilon said the funds should go directly to the agencies primarily involved in intelligence gathering operations such as the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the Philippine National Police and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency.
In a separate radio interview, Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa championed the allocation of CIFs for the PNP—which he used to head—and other agencies in the security cluster. However, he opposed hastily removing the budget for counterinsurgency drives, saying such efforts need to be sustained.
As for the CIFs in non-security cluster agencies, dela Rosa said “a consensus” must be forged on this and echoed Angara’s call for more thorough discussions involving all senators.