Accountability for 2025 funds mess? As much as Ombudsman, says Recto

The brand new ‘Little President,’ in the meantime, guarantees that the administration will ‘go over all of the amendments’ within the 2026 funds like a fine-toothed comb to stop a repeat of 2025

MANILA, Philippines – Performing Govt Secretary Ralph Recto mentioned on Monday, January 5, that accountability for the 2025 funds could be as much as the Workplace of the Ombudsman to analyze amid elevated scrutiny about the way it was crafted and the way disbursements had been made. 

“That’s for the Ombudsman to look into,” Recto mentioned in an opportunity interview after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the 2026 funds into regulation. The Ombudsman is himself a former Cupboard official of Marcos — former justice secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla.

The January 5 signing date is the most recent that the funds has been signed throughout the Marcos administration. 

In late 2024, Marcos and his financial managers — a lot of whom have since been changed — scrambled to “regain management” of what could be the P6.326-trillion nationwide funds for 2025. 

A number of of the officers whom Marcos labored with within the waning days of 2024 — former government secretary Lucas Bersamin, former funds chief Amenah Pangandaman, and former public works chief Manuel Bonoan — have since been sacked in relation to the huge flood management corruption scandal that the administration continues to be attempting to handle. 

Solely two officers from these late-2024 conferences stay within the Cupboard — Govt Secretary Recto, who was then finance chief, and Division of Economic system, Planning, and Improvement Secretary Arsenio Balisacan. 

Watchdogs, critics, and even a former finance chief have criticized the now-infamous 2025 funds that has been described as among the many worst in Philippine historical past. 

In 2025, some P363.4 billion in unprogrammed appropriations remained, even after Marcos already vetoed P168.240 billion value of line gadgets underneath the standby fund, or line gadgets whose funding sources had but to be decided. 

Pangandaman and Bersamin, based on Malacañang final November, had “supplied and tendered their resignations out of delicadeza after their departments had been talked about in allegations associated to the flood management anomaly at the moment underneath investigation.” Bersamin would later dispute that he had resigned and mentioned that an unnamed one that was not from Malacañang had spoken to him on the cellphone to inform him to depart. 

Bonoan, in the meantime, left his submit in September, citing “command duty.” It was later revealed that Bonoan himself had hyperlinks to flood management tasks by way of relations and buddies.  

Recto, who was appointed to his new submit in mid-November 2025, mentioned the administration would “go over all of the amendments [in the budget] like a fine-toothed comb.”

“‘Di na mauulit ‘yung nangyari (What occurred then gained’t occur once more),” mentioned the so-called “Little President,” with out going into specifics.

In signing the 2026 funds, Marcos promised transparency and accountability — a battlecry of his because the flood management mess began. He vowed throughout his 2025 State of the Nation Deal with to carry accountable those that profited from substandard and nonexistent tasks.

Marcos vetoed a bit of underneath half of the unprogrammed appropriations that also made it previous Congress, leaving solely three line gadgets — the Philippines’ help for foreign-assisted tasks, navy modernization, and danger administration associated to public-private partnership tasks — underneath unprogrammed appropriations. – Rappler.com