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The 2025 Budget: Not a Ledger, But a Looter’s Manifesto

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Louis ‘Barok’ Biraogo

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The 2025 Budget: Not a Ledger, But a Looter’s Manifesto
Cabinet Feast: How the NEP Became a Billion-Peso Buffet for the Palace Inner Circle

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — December 29, 2025

THE 2025 National Budget isn’t a fiscal blueprint; it’s a heist ledger, with line items meticulously annotated for the plunderers in power.

Executive Pork Barrel 2.0: How Cabinet Lords Turned the NEP into Their Private Banquet

Consider the spectacle unfolding before us: billions in so-called “Allocables” — that darling euphemism for discretionary slush funds — doled out not to humble district representatives scraping for barangay roads, but to the exalted lords of the Cabinet. Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson, wielding documents from the late Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral, has laid bare this post-Belgica abomination: at least five Cabinet secretaries, including former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) chief Manuel Bonoan with a princely P30.5 billion in batches, and the Executive Secretary (one Lucas Bersamin, no less) tagged with a cool P8.3 billion under the cryptic “ES”. (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 27 Dec. 2025).

This isn’t mere bureaucratic eccentricity, mga kaibigan. This is the sophisticated evolution of pork barrel patronage, a mutant strain that survived the Supreme Court’s scalpel in Belgica v. Ochoa (G.R. No. 208566, 2013), where the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) was eviscerated for violating separation of powers and allowing post-enactment meddling. Here, the National Expenditure Program (NEP) — the Executive’s sacred proposal — is pre-loaded like a feast for the inner circle, perverting the budget process into executive self-dealing.

Lawmakers get allocables for their “districts,” theoretically. But what, pray tell, is the “district” of the Executive Secretary? The entire Malacañang bureaucracy? Shall we christen Bersamin’s P8.3 billion the “Barangay Palace Development Fund,” complete with ghost flood controls and phantom kickbacks?

“Public plate: all-you-can’t-eat.”

Hearsay Gambit or Highway Robbery? The Palace’s Desperate Dodge on the Cabral Files

Ah, the absurdity reaches peak farce when Malacañang dismisses the Cabral Files as “unauthenticated hearsay.” Res ipsa loquitur — the thing speaks for itself. These documents, including Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) dated December 27, 2024, are deemed worthless until certified by… the very DPWH and Department of Budget and Management (DBM) potentially implicated?

That’s akin to demanding the burglar authenticate the crowbar fingerprints before admitting a break-in. Investigative bodies aren’t shackled to trial-level authentication; they probe on relevant, material evidence sufficient for probable cause. To blockade with “authentication” is procedural obstruction, a classic quid pro quo for silence. We’ve seen this gambit before: premature dismissal as “hearsay” to evade the highway robbery staring us in the face.

Legal Carnage: From Ghost Projects to Plunder – The Charges That Should Haunt These Officials

Legally, this is annihilation territory. If these Allocables funded ghost projects — as contractor testimonies and Lacson’s probes suggest — we’re staring down Malversation under Article 217 of the Revised Penal Code, Falsification of Public Documents, and potentially Plunder under Republic Act No. 7080 if the amassed billions cross the P50 million threshold through serial graft.

Designating discretionary funds to unrelated appropriations? That’s Technical Malversation plain and simple. Constitutionally, it’s a resurrected PDAF horror: executive post-enactment intervention outlawed in Belgica v. Ochoa, and DBM as illicit conduit rebuked in Araullo v. Aquino III (G.R. No. 209287, 2014) on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) abuses.

Ethically? Republic Act No. 6713 (Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees)’s pillars — patriotism, integrity, honesty — crumble under P30.5 billion personal pork. Which principle, exactly, does Bonoan’s batch bonanza embody? Just and holy service, perhaps?

Prosecution in a Politically Immunized System: Pipe Dream or Public Uprising?

Prosecution? In our political immunology, the Office of the Ombudsman — empowered under Republic Act No. 6770 (The Ombudsman Act of 1989) — might dawdle amid alliances, but citizen complaints can force the issue. Probable cause isn’t Everest; public suspicion here is a tsunami.

Defenses like “ministerial duty” or “no direct receipt” collapse under command responsibility and conspiracy doctrines — superiors don’t need to pocket cash to orchestrate the feast.

The Cabral Enigma: Whistleblower Silenced at the Perfect Moment

And then there’s the Cabral Conundrum. The whistleblower with original copies, poised to testify on SAROs, falls from Kennon Road on December 19 — timing so convenient it chills the spine. Authorities lean suicide, autopsy citing blunt trauma, antidepressants found. No foul play, they insist.

Yet in the Philippines, the deadliest profession isn’t mining or fishing; it’s holding damning evidence against the powerful. Her silence is tactical tragedy — or worse.

Manifesto for Accountability: No More Shadows in the People’s Treasury

Enough. This isn’t Lacson versus Marcos; it’s the Treasury versus the Thieves.

We demand:

  • Immediate: The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee subpoena original SAROs and DBM journals now — no waiting for executive “authentication.”
  • Systemic: Enact a Full Disclosure Amendment to the General Appropriations Act (GAA) — every insertion, from conception to approval, digitally logged, real-time public access. No more shadows.
  • Legal: Ombudsman, treat authenticated Senate documents as formal complaint. Dispatch the probe; invoke forensic audits on budgets, not just bodies. The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) isn’t a pawn.
  • Public: Rise. This plunder mocks our floods, our taxes, our trust. We, the wronged, will not abide another Belgica resurrection. Justice or bust — defiant, uncompromising, for once the conscience demands it.

Defiant, unforgiving, and utterly done with your bullshit—para sa bayan, hanggang dulo.

–Barok

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Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo

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