[Inside the Newsroom] Trust and public funds: why and how we obsess over the national budget

Marian Hukom/Rappler

There are reasons why 'trust' should never be something you assume when it comes to the people’s money, even if (and maybe, particularly if) they are labelled confidential or intelligence funds

AT A GLANCE

• The author reflects on the reliance on 'trust' in handling confidential and intelligence funds, emphasizing the need for skepticism and accountability in government spending.
• Historical abuses of confidential funds highlight the importance of checks and balances, as demonstrated by past scandals involving military funds.
• Rappler is committed to scrutinizing the budget process and providing transparency through training and accessible data, urging public support to combat corruption.

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Ten years ago, when funds allocated to confidential and intelligence expenditures skyrocketed under the Duterte administration, I asked then Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno for his thoughts on what safeguards should be put in place to prevent potential abuse of these funds. 

Diokno’s response then: “We just have to trust him (President Rodrigo Duterte) na mabuting tao siya (that he is a good person),” he said.

I was astounded. Trust? Journalists are trained to be skeptical and suspicious, particularly when it comes to matters that involve power and money.  

The word “trust” is also anathema to the checks and balances that is embedded in our system of government. 

It therefore felt surreal that — 10 years later — there is that word again: trust.

People reporting to Duterte’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, are saying the same thing before an impeachment court: they trusted Colonel Raymund Lachica, the VP’s chief security officer. They trusted the Vice President.

Hello! I am Gemma Mendoza, head for strategic programs at Rappler. As a journalist, I am particularly obsessed with the budget process. I have been scrutinizing budget, procurement, and audit documents for over two decades now.  

There are reasons why “trust” should never be something you assume when it comes to the people’s money, even if (and maybe, particularly if) they are labelled confidential or intelligence funds.

Former heads of the Commission on Audit (COA) have already said that confidential and intelligence funds are difficult to audit. 

Prior to that specific interview with Diokno, I co-wrote the book The Enemy Within with Aries Rufo and Glenda Gloria. That book dived deep into how the military top brass abused confidential and intelligence funds allocated to the armed forces and, among other things, diverted these funds to their pabaon retirement system. 

A former military general took his own life following congressional investigations into this scandal. 

While there are legitimate reasons why certain funds cannot go through the usual processes, the Constitution is explicit about subjecting all kinds of funds to audit. 

It says: “No law shall be passed exempting any entity of the Government or its subsidiary in any guise whatever, or any investment of public funds, from the jurisdiction of the Commission on Audit.”

This was precisely why in 2015 the budget department and COA worked with the local government and defense departments to come up with Joint Circular No. 2015-01.

Within each government office, each vote and signature in the budget request, procurement, and liquidation process is supposed to represent checks to misuse. Each signatory is supposed to be responsible. They are not supposed to “trust” each other. 

The fact that the confidential funds of Sara Duterte are now at the center of an impeachment trial is a demonstration of how various steps in this process of checks and balances failed the Filipino people. Rappler has reported on this every step of the way. 

This is why we require every journalist at Rappler to be familiar with the national budget and the budget process. We remind our reporters that the scrutiny of how public funds are allocated and spent needs to happen at each phase of the process: planning and formulation, approval, implementation, and audit. 

Beyond the numbers themselves, everything requires sharp eyes: the logic of the budget, the expected outcomes, the process of fund release up to the point the project funded by said item is marked as completed.

This is not an easy endeavor. Many parts of this process remain opaque, despite various transparency initiatives. And so journalists need to learn not just how the formal and informal processes work, where to get paper trail, and how to read between the lines of each document. 

In the past couple of weeks, our team went through another budget refresher sessions for this purpose. 

Spotting issues requires the ability to analyze budget data over a period of time. Formats in which data is made available is not always consistent, and so we have been training our journalists in data processing and analysis. 

We have gone a step further. On RappLearn, we now have a training module on understanding the budget process, which serves as a supplement to onground training for staff, fellows, and stakeholders. Budget toplines as well as granular budget data are now available and visualized on our website. 

If you want to know how much each department received for its staff since 2020, you should be able to see that on our #BudgetWatch page. 

Our pages for each department now have the department’s detailed budget. For example, if you want to know if the public high school in your city received funding for internet services, then you may check our topic page for the Department of Education. 

All of these require resources. And this is where we need support. 

If you have not yet signed up for Rappler Plus, please do so, and please ask your friends to do the same. If you want to give further assistance, please consider donating or volunteering. 

Work with us to ensure that every peso spent from the public treasury counts, connects to improvements in the lives of Filipinos, and is not lost to corruption or misuse. – Rappler.com

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