Accountability for 2025 budget mess? Up to Ombudsman, says Recto

MANILA, Philippines – Acting Executive Secretary Ralph Recto said on Monday, January 5, that accountability for the 2025 budget would be up to the Office of the Ombudsman to investigate amid increased scrutiny about how it was crafted and how disbursements were made. 

“That’s for the Ombudsman to look into,” Recto said in a chance interview after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. signed the 2026 budget into law. The Ombudsman is himself a former Cabinet official of Marcos — former justice secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla.

The January 5 signing date is the latest that the budget has been signed during the Marcos administration. 

In late 2024, Marcos and his economic managers — many of whom have since been replaced — scrambled to “regain control” of what would be the P6.326-trillion national budget for 2025. 

Several of the officials whom Marcos worked with in the waning days of 2024 — former executive secretary Lucas Bersamin, former budget chief Amenah Pangandaman, and former public works chief Manuel Bonoan — have since been sacked in relation to the massive flood control corruption scandal that the administration is still trying to manage. 

Only two officials from those late-2024 meetings remain in the Cabinet — Executive Secretary Recto, who was then finance chief, and Department of Economy, Planning, and Development Secretary Arsenio Balisacan. 

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

In 2025, some P363.4 billion in unprogrammed appropriations remained, even after Marcos already vetoed P168.240 billion worth of line items under the standby fund, or line items whose funding sources had yet to be determined. 

Pangandaman and Bersamin, according to Malacañang last November, had “offered and tendered their resignations out of delicadeza after their departments were mentioned in allegations related to the flood control anomaly currently under investigation.” Bersamin would later dispute that he had resigned and said that an unnamed person who was not from Malacañang had spoken to him on the phone to tell him to leave. 

Bonoan, meanwhile, left his post in September, citing “command responsibility.” It was later revealed that Bonoan himself had links to flood control projects through family members and friends.  

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

“‘Di na mauulit ‘yung nangyari (What happened then won’t happen again),” said the so-called “Little President,” without going into specifics.

In signing the 2026 budget, Marcos promised transparency and accountability — a battlecry of his since the flood control mess started. He vowed during his 2025 State of the Nation Address to hold accountable those who profited from substandard and nonexistent projects.

Marcos vetoed a little under half of the unprogrammed appropriations that still made it past Congress, leaving only three line items — the Philippines’ support for foreign-assisted projects, military modernization, and risk management related to public-private partnership projects — under unprogrammed appropriations. – Rappler.com