A prominent activist lawmaker is calling for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to face potential charges, arguing that he bears ultimate responsibility for executing national budgets recently deemed unconstitutional by the Philippine Supreme Court. According to Antonio Tinio of the ACT Teachers party-list, while legislators may have proposed the controversial allocations, the President and his Cabinet were the primary implementers of these funds. The Court’s decision specifically flagged massive, unauthorized injections of cash into infrastructure and special projects across the 2024, 2025, and 2026 budgets, characterizing them as illegal lump-sum appropriations that bypassed constitutional limitations on executive and legislative power.

The Supreme Court’s ruling centers on the prohibition against Congress increasing the total budget proposed by the executive branch, a safeguard designed to prevent the proliferation of “pork barrel” style spending. By inflating project costs—many of which have been linked to substandard work or phantom infrastructure—policymakers created an environment rife with corruption. Members of the Makabayan Coalition, who have consistently voted against these budgets, feel vindicated by the verdict. As legal experts suggest that those who acted in bad faith regarding these unconstitutional items could face criminal or administrative penalties, the pressure is mounting on the administration to account for the systematic abuse of public funds.