Former Ilonggo Senate President Franklin M. Drilon wants harsher penalties for elected officials found involved in corrupt practices, which have been prevalent in government.
“I would strongly suggest that the maximum penalty should be imposed on any legislator who is found to have committed such anomalies,” he said in a TV interview.
The imposition of stiffer penalties is one of the key reforms being pushed by Drilon to address the systemic abuse in the use of public funds.
“In other words, you impose the maximum penalty so that it is a policy pronouncement that indeed, those who violated public trust and their mandate should be more liable or should be punished more than the ordinary bureaucrat,” he said.
The former lawmaker also proposed to prohibit the inclusion of unprogrammed appropriations in the national budget, which is the source of much of the abuses.
“I would propose that Blue Ribbon recommend legislation which would prohibit the inclusion of unprogrammed allocation in the budget, because this is the subject of the abuse,” Drilon said.
“All of these things that we see today is because the congressmen and the senators included the provision on program appropriation, and what had happened was that this was taken advantage of to fund the mess in the flood control,” he added.
According to Drilon, even without new legislation, the president could act immediately by withholding the release of unprogrammed funds until there is an actual surplus in the overall national budget.
“That he can announce as a matter of policy, because in the 2026 General Appropriations Act, there are still unprogrammed appropriations,” he said. IMT
