Photo from Bulatlat
August 5, 2023
Human rights alliance Karapatan lambasted the Marcos Jr. administration’s proposal to increase the president’s travel funds, and the continued allocation of confidential funds in the offices of the president and vice president.
“The Marcos Jr. government’s callousness and ruthlessness are beyond belief, amid the people’s clear demands to at least alleviate their suffering due to calamity and crisis. Marcos Jr. wants to make the national budget his own personal wallet, a steady source of funds for his field trips, and fascist schemes against the people,” Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay said.
According to the Department of Budget and Management, the Marcos Jr. administration has proposed a total of P9.2 billion budget in confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) across the different government officers and agencies. Gabriela Women’s Party, on the other hand, revealed that the Office of the President gets almost half of this total CIF (48.9%), amounting at P4.56 billion.
“The Marcos Jr. administration’s allocation of billions of government funds to the CIF, while keeping silent on significant civil and political rights issues in all his pronouncements, spell danger for many Filipinos who are at the receiving end of Marcos Jr’s unspoken war, all to suppress the protests and dissent under his rule,” said Palabay.
The group said that the defeaning silence of the Marcos Jr. government on issues of human rights violations in the country is meant to smother the cries of rural and urban communities outraged with the rise in killings, raids and illegal arrests, aerial bombings, and relentless terror-tagging against persons and communities.
“Aside from the glaring lack of transparency in how the government will use the said funds, it is self-serving and brutally deceptive that the president and vice-president get to keep more funds, on top of the already huge amount of money allotted for their warmonger mouthpiece, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and state security forces under the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP),” Palabay added.
The group also denounced the proposal to add more money to the president’s travel funds.
“The president obviously turns a deaf ear to public criticisms over his frequent trips. He has the gall to ask for a bigger budget, showing how oblivious he is to the people’s suffering,” Palabay said. “Marcos Jr. makes fools out of the Filipino people, employing the lousy explanation that if he travels more, the country shall get more investments, when there is a need to prioritize government spending, and allocate more for social services,” she added.
“Apart from being anti-people, a budget prioritizing foreign debt service, military spending, and presidential trips is self-serving and deplorable to the core,” Palabay said.
Karapatan called on Congress to reject the Marcos Jr. government’s budget proposals. “Filipinos will be made to pay for this president’s caprices, all to save the president’s image, to secure his power. We call on Congress to heed the cry of the people to reject the ballooning confidential, intelligence and presidential travel funds!” Palabay concluded.