Neil Jayson Servallos - The Philippine Star
October 24, 2026 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — While acknowledging the limits of the Supreme Court (SC) ruling that recently struck down unprogrammed appropriations (UA), Sen. Panfilo Lacson wants government officials who acted in bad faith or committed graft using the invalidated budget items to be held accountable.
“We need to run after those who misused budget provisions, which were deemed unconstitutional,” Lacson told reporters yesterday.
The senator explained that under the legal doctrine of operative fact, the government cannot simply invalidate or recover funds that were already obligated or disbursed before the high court issued its decision.
The operative fact doctrine is a rule recognized by the SC, wherein a law or an order can be declared unconstitutional but everything that happened while people were following it “in good faith” remains real and valid.
“Funds that were unused can no longer be spent. But what about the funds already obligated or dispersed, how will you run after those? The ruling wasn’t out then, it wasn’t declared unconstitutional at the time,” Lacson said.
When asked to differentiate between good and bad faith in the utilization of the funds, Lacson pointed to the actual execution of the projects.
“Bad faith refers to how the funds were spent,” he explained.
The SC recently ruled that Congress committed grave abuse of discretion by increasing the executive branch’s recommended budget for unprogrammed funds in the 2024 and 2025 General Appropriations Acts.
Lacson, who was not part of the Senate when the assailed budgets were passed, heavily criticized the bloated allocations, noting that he had already been calling out the unprogrammed appropriations even outside the chamber.
“That’s why I called these the worst budgets ever, even counting the 2013 Development Acceleration Program that was declared unconstitutional. I think this is even worse,” Lacson said.
‘Power of the purse’
Despite the SC ruling that rendered the transfer of programs and projects to UA in the 2024 budget unconstitutional, outgoing Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo maintained it was part of Congress’ job, having been given the power of the purse.
Gesmundo was among the 13 justices who voted in favor of the decision penned by Senior Associate Justice Marvic Leonen, which flagged the increase in UA by 449.5 billion, making it a whopping P731.4 billion.
“Congress has the power and, more importantly, the duty, to guard the purse by modifying or even changing the items in the President’s budget which Congress deems proper,” Gesmundo wrote in his 24-page concurring opinion.
In proposing rules to ensure lawful implementation of the budget, Gesmundo said “Congress must be able to show that PAPs (programs and projects) are implementation-ready, at the very least.”
In transferring PAPs from programmed to unprogrammed funds, “Congress must ensure that, at the very least, such transfer does not effectively frustrate the government’s valid and existing obligations, whether locally or internationally.”
2022, 2023 GAAs, too
A budget watchdog has questioned the constitutionality of previous national allocations, saying Congress increased total appropriations beyond the executive branch’s proposals by adding UA without reducing programmed spending, similar to the practice that led the SC to strike down the 2024 budget.
In a social media post, People’s Budget Coalition co-convenor AJ Montesa said the 2022 and 2023 budgets could also be considered unconstitutional if the test applied by the SC to the 2024 budget was applied.
“(They) exceeded the constitutional ceiling for 2022 to 2023. However, since no one challenged them, the court never ruled on the matter,” he said.
Montesa said Congress in 2022 inserted P100 billion in the UA without reducing programmed appropriations by corresponding amounts.
“The UA effectively became a shadow budget,” he noted. – Ghio Ong, Aubrey Rose Inosante