Leadership fund: Improper but not illegal

The P92.8-million flood control project in Pandi, Bulacan, for which former Sen. Bong Revilla is now on trial, was inserted into the national budget through an errata. In his 2025 State of the Nation Address (Sona), President Marcos named the method from the podium: “Mga kickback, mga initiative, errata, SOP, for the boys.”

“Leadership fund” is the latest label for an old discredited practice historically called “pork barrel.” It does not appear as such in the budget; there is no item by that name in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) or the General Appropriations Act (GAA).

Legislators, who are supposed to be its beneficiaries, deny knowing the term, and they are technically correct. But they probably won’t say they don’t know what it means. Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who has pressed the issue hardest, calls it improper but not illegal, a gray area, like so many things in our country where politics trumps the law.

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Former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Manuel Bonoan testified before the Sandiganbayan this month, as prosecution witness in the malversation case against Revilla, that a “leadership fund” of P24 billion had been set aside in his agency for senators’ priority projects in the 2025 budget. About P21 billion was actually taken up, against P13.29 billion the year before. Bonoan is himself charged and detained at the Philippine National Police General Hospital, a co-accused of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada in a nonbailable plunder case. Former Senate President Migz Zubiri has denied the P24-billion figure.

All senators of the 19th Congress availed themselves of the privilege, Bonoan said, submitting their lists to the DPWH, usually through former Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo. These were vetted by the planning service, then folded into the agency’s submission to the Department of Budget and Management.

“The leadership fund came about due to the numerous cuts we observed in 2023,” Bonoan explained. “When it came up in the GAA, to our surprise and dismay, the core programs of the department were reduced drastically.” Up to 88.8 percent of funds for foreign-assisted projects had been cut and reallocated at the bicam. Pre-accommodating the Senate, he reasoned, would deter it. Or so he thought.

He also took this to Malacañang. “I reported it to the President. The President was alarmed by the reduction of the budgets … it will derail the implementation of the socioeconomic agenda.” The instruction to find a remedy came at a Cabinet meeting. The Palace said this week that Marcos had no personal knowledge of the fund and would not have tolerated it.

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As a practical solution to congressional mangling of the NEP, the fund sounded sensible enough. But it was patently improper, Lacson argues, because it solicited congressional participation at the budget preparation phase, an executive function. And it failed on its own terms: insertions at the bicam continued unabated anyway.

In this light we see the 2025 Sona differently. “Mahiya naman kayo!” was a direct address, not so much to the private contractors as to the assembled legislators, who stood up to applaud as though the message was not meant for them.

I don’t want to dwell on the moral failure of individuals. More crucial to me as a sociologist is the systemic environment in which the governance function is mired. Indeed, not everyone who uses “allocables” steals. But the system makes theft, in the form of kickbacks and bribes, low-risk, hard to see, and thus almost expected, and then leaves the choice to politicians who have campaign expenses to pay and utang na loob obligations to meet.

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Then there is fiscal centralization. Despite the Local Government Code and the Mandanas ruling, much infrastructure funding sits in national agencies, above all the DPWH. Funds for district needs must be negotiated nationally rather than raised locally. And the principle guiding the typical legislator in the scramble has always been to secure the maximum he can get, rather than the minimum he cannot do without.

Pork thus operates as a functional substitute, not a badge of dishonor. Which is why simply banning it keeps failing. The Supreme Court struck down PDAF in 2013, prohibiting post-enactment participation and lump sums; the practice moved upstream into budget preparation.

Pork explains why money flows to districts through legislators. It does not explain why some flood control structures were never built. Flood control is almost uniquely selected for fraud because its outputs are dispersed along riverbanks where nobody looks. The public learns of them only when they fail, during a flood that destroys the evidence and supplies the alibi.

So the name matters more than it seems. Ban the leadership fund, as Lacson urges, and the function will resurface under a term we have not yet heard. It has done so at least twice already.

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