“The basic motivation for establishing (Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency) was that the overall state of budget transparency around the world is poor: Measured against the Open Budget Index, the national budgets of 77 countries — home to half the world’s population — were at that time failing to meet basic standards of budget transparency. While there had been some progress in increasing fiscal transparency, it was uneven and slow, and would take a generation to achieve significant and sustainable improvement in many countries… The GIFT High Level Principles were endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in 2012, which encouraged member states to ‘intensify efforts to enhance transparency, participation and accountability in fiscal policies.’” —OECD Budget Transparency Toolkit, 2017
With what we have been doing in the Philippines since 2022 (and we are still doing), we will fall again in, and fail before, the eyes of the international community that sets the standards meant for this global initiative. In other words, the UN rejected schemes that run counter to the more elevated principle of bukas-aklat (read: open-book accounting/management), even as we were the national convenor of the Transforming Education Summit (TES) during the 77th UN General Assembly in New York last year.
A Department of Budget and Management press release (2023) resounded: “Transparency is key to building public trust. The DBM and GIFT will work closer together to ensure and elevate transparency efforts to make the Philippines a prime example of fiscal transparency not only in Asia but in the world,” DBM Secretary Amenah Pangandaman said… Also tackled during the meeting were suggestions and ways forward to: improve the ranking of the Philippines in the Open Budget Survey (inter alia).”
In the TES summit, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expected governments “to elevate education to the top of the global political agenda and to maximize public awareness and engagement.” Starting last year, however, we have a pauso (trying to start a trend) in the Philippines, treating confidential funds as OK lang (just fine) for our president and vice president whose offices are both under the executive branch of government. A game changer?
Or is it better to say that we, including our very representatives in the two-chamber congress, end up being too in the dark in a game plan of the Executive offices that we simply have no right to know? This despite government affirmations that it is sticking to “clarify the limits of the Executive’s budgetary powers and strengthen the Congress’ power of the purse” (DBM, 2016) and “allocate and use public funds not only equitably and prudently, but with transparency and accountability” (Pangandaman, 2023). In this game, the Philippines beats itself.
For us to be ultimately positive in this game, with the swelling confidential and intelligence funds (CIF), let us cross our fingers and fervently pray that the Commission on Audit (COA) will attempt against all odds to convene with the interagency committee that promulgated the ruling on the CIF for them to finally come up with updated guidelines instead of just keeping the ones made eight long years ago. COA’s Citizen Participatory Audit was conferred a Special Mention Award from the Jury of Global Initiative for Fiscal Transparency. That was in 2017, though.
We also remain hopeful that journalists will continue to do their job of asking the right questions – minority blocs in the House and Senate did ask them during budget hearings in their respective committees and vow to do the same in the plenary debates despite “parliamentary courtesy” being invoked by majority of the lawmakers. For instance, reporters Bernaby Lo and Bea Cupin said their chat group has kept on asking communications officials of the Office of the Vice President how the OVP spent their budget and why they had confidential funds not appropriated by Congress last year.
Asked to comment, former Senate President Franklin Drilon pointed out, “It is clear that the transfer (of the funds from the Office of the President to OVP) runs counter to the basic principles of budgeting and governance enshrined within Article VI, Section 25 (5) of the Constitution.” It provides: “No law shall be passed authorizing any transfer of appropriations; however, the (heads), by law, be authorized to augment any item in the general appropriations law for their respective offices from savings in other items of their respective appropriations.” Besides, there is a related jurisprudence being violated in the Supreme Court-decided case of Araullo vs. Aquino, according to legal luminaries.
Since the OVP’s 2022 budget had no CIF, Drilon asked which item was there to augment, raising the serious constitutional issue of the fund transfer. And for international observers’ central issue: We are telling them, amidst the almost non-stop official trips abroad by the OP, how peculiar the Philippines is in promising to be a leading example of fiscal transparency but is doing exactly the opposite.
DC Alviar
Professor DC Alviar serves as a member of the steering committee of the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). He was part of National University’s community extension project that imparted the five disciplines of a learning organization (Senge, 1990) to communities in a local government unit. He writes and edits local reports for Mega Scene. He graduated with a master’s degree in development communication from the University of the Philippines Open University in Los Baños. He recently defended a dissertation proposal for his doctorate degree in communication at the same graduate school under a Philippine government scholarship grant. He was editor-in-chief of his high school paper Ang Ugat and the Adamson News.
