A BUSINESS group warned Tuesday, October 28, of a shrinking public trust towards the government as the multibillion-peso flood control scandal continues to unravel.
Rafael “Apa” Ongpin, executive director of the Makati Business Club, one of the first to sound the alarm about potential corruption in the national budget, noted a “slow” progress in the investigation into the flood control mess but acknowledged due process was needed.
Civil society groups and the public in general have been putting pressure on the government to act swiftly and make the first arrests of corrupt politicians and personalities and recover their unlawfully acquired wealth from flood relief money.
Speaking on ANC, Ongpin said that while the corruption scandal was not adding any new adverse effects, as the mess itself has already had a negative result, its impact is now “primarily political, it’s basically a crisis of trust, people no longer trust the government.”
“And it’s affecting business in the sense that certainly dealings with government are now all subject to all sorts of scrutiny,” he added.
He also lamented that the budget process “made it quite easy for bad-faith politicians to “plunder” and “misuse public funds,” noting that the system makes it “very hard” to hold people accountable because of a lack of broader freedom of information laws.
“These longstanding flaws in the budget process are centered primarily on the opaque bicameral conference committee, where all the magic happens, a lot of unprogrammed funds and insertions are put in there, and it’s not transparent at all. It doesn’t say who senator or who congressman inserted this thing,” said Ongpin.
“Freedom of information or transparency, shining the light of public attention on these dealings, is the number one step that needs to happen,” he said.
Several politicians were accused of proposing billions of pesos in insertions and unprogrammed allocations in the national budget to get kickbacks from public works projects that they would fund.
This month, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he had the agreement of Congress leaders to livestream the historically secretive proceedings of the bicameral conference committee, which is expected to reconcile the differing versions of the 2026 national budget of the House and the Senate.
But ACT Teachers party-list’s Rep. Antonio Tinio warned that some members of the bicam could still make amendments to the expenditure program that had been discussed out of public knowledge.
Ongpin pushed for the passage of freedom of information and beneficial ownership transparency laws, adding that the group wanted a “rules-based” budgeting process in which there is citizen oversight and greater transparency in procurement proceedings.
He also called for the amendment of bank secrecy laws “to help trace government money.” (ABS-CBN News)
