Parliamentary courtesy has its limits

By Herman M. Lagon

Try submitting a budget proposal in a government office without explaining it. Ask for a new printer, three laptops, travel funds, or PHP 200,000 for a training program, then tell the budget officer, “Sir, courtesy na lang.” You may discover rather quickly that government courtesy has limits. There will be forms, quotations, work plans, signatures, supporting documents, and questions about why you need what you say you need. As there should be. Which makes one old congressional tradition increasingly difficult to explain: when the amounts become much larger and the office much more powerful, why do the questions sometimes become fewer?

That question returned during deliberations on the proposed 2027 budget of the Office of the President (OP). ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio wanted to ask why around PHP 4.56 billion of the OP’s proposed PHP 10.1 billion budget — nearly half — would go to confidential and intelligence funds. The House appropriations panel instead voted 37–5 to end the deliberations quickly, with parliamentary courtesy invoked to forgo further questioning.

There is nothing wrong with parliamentary courtesy itself. It is meant to show respect for coequal branches and high officials. Rep. Isidro Ungab explained that questions can still be raised later during plenary deliberations. Fair enough. Government needs civility. Congress need not sound like a barangay videoke dispute at 1:30 a.m.

But courtesy becomes harder to defend when it stops being about how questions are asked and begins determining whether questions may be asked at all.

Tinio’s argument is especially interesting because it offers a test of consistency. Last year, he challenged Vice President Sara Duterte to waive parliamentary courtesy and answer questions concerning her office’s budget and confidential funds. His position then was that officials should be prepared to explain public expenditures. Now he is directing essentially the same principle toward President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. He noted that PHP 612.5 million in confidential funds associated with Vice President Sara had undergone intense scrutiny and asked why the OP should not similarly explain its much larger confidential and intelligence allocation. His phrase was worth remembering: there should be a “fair application” of transparency.

On that narrow principle, he has a point. Public money has no political color. Neither should accountability.

That does not mean the President has no legitimate need for confidential or intelligence funds. Executive Secretary Ralph Recto offered a reasonable counterargument: the President is chief executive, head of state, and commander in chief, with direct responsibilities involving law and order and national security. Recto also pointed to the COA’s unmodified opinion on the OP’s financial statements. Those arguments deserve to be heard rather than casually dismissed. National security obviously cannot operate like a school PTA treasury where every expense is read aloud before adjournment.

That is why hearings matter. Intelligence work may require secrecy, but public money still requires accountability. Government need not reveal operations, but it should explain why billions are needed and who checks the spending.

There is another reason this matters now. The proposed 2027 national budget is PHP 7.2 trillion. Earlier in the budget process, Tinio raised questions about what he described as a pattern of large amounts appearing in the National Expenditure Program and subsequently being sharply reduced in enacted appropriations, potentially creating room for congressional insertions. Among his examples were foreign-assisted transportation projects proposed at PHP 135.84 billion for 2026 and later reduced to PHP 64.07 billion. Acting Budget Secretary Kim Robert de Leon acknowledged the steep reductions, although that acknowledgment does not by itself prove that the alleged “padding” occurred for an improper purpose.

That qualification is important. Questions are not proof. Scrutiny is not conviction. A large confidential fund is not automatically a corrupt fund, just as a budget reduction is not automatically evidence of a sinister insertion scheme. We should be careful about converting suspicion into guilt simply because politics has trained us to choose teams before reading the documents. But the reverse is equally troubling: absence of proof should not become an excuse to prevent the questions through which facts might be clarified.

Those of us in schools know this routine well. A student presents an unexpected finding, and we naturally ask, “How did you arrive at this?” That does not mean we suspect cheating. We simply want to understand the work. The same goes for money. When funds are spent, people expect an accounting. Asking for receipts is not disrespect. It is part of trust.

That should not change as the amounts grow. If principals account for thousands, university presidents for millions, and department secretaries for billions, surely the most powerful offices in government should welcome reasonable questions as well.

We all have good reasons to value those questions. We have watched too many stories about ghost projects, questionable procurement, insertions, confidential funds, and unfinished infrastructure flare up and then fade away. Not every allegation is true, but unanswered controversies slowly wear down public confidence.

Soon, people stop expecting accountability altogether. That is dangerous. We already have laws, hearings, watchdogs, and investigations. The harder task is making them work despite politics, patronage, and weak implementation. Sometimes the rules are not missing. What is missing is the willingness to follow them wherever they lead.

Perhaps parliamentary courtesy does not need to disappear from congressional life altogether. Courtesy is useful. Decency is useful. Respect between institutions is useful. But in budget hearings, courtesy should govern behavior, not restrict scrutiny. Ask respectfully. Answer professionally. Protect genuinely classified information. Observe appropriate security procedures. Give officials enough time to explain. Correct unfair insinuations. Demand evidence from accusers, too. None of that requires Congress to surrender its questions.

And the standard has to survive changes in political weather. Ask about Duterte’s PHP 612.5 million. Ask about Marcos’s PHP 4.56 billion. Ask about questionable congressional insertions. Ask about flood-control expenditures. Ask about old controversies if credible questions remain, and investigate new ones even when the names involved belong to our preferred political camp. One investigation does not cancel another. Accountability becomes theater when we demand receipts only from people we dislike.

Strip away the personalities and partisan noise, and Tinio’s challenge is worth taking seriously. Congress does not disrespect the presidency, vice presidency, judiciary, or any other constitutional institution by asking responsible questions about public money. If anything, serious scrutiny protects those institutions from suspicion and gives officials the opportunity to place facts on record.

We Filipinos are famously courteous. We say po. We say opo. We offer the better chair to a guest. We send visitors home with leftover pancit even when we secretly wanted it for breakfast.

By all means, let Congress keep the manners.

Just do not let courtesy leave the hearing room carrying the receipts.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions by which he is employed or with which he is connected.