Resigned Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co’s allegations that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered P100 billion in insertions in the 2025 budget and got kickbacks afterward made ‘no logical sense,’ Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco said on Saturday.
In an interview with the Inquirer, Tiangco – himself a budget reform advocate – said Co’s statements ‘don’t make sense,’ as the President did not have to wait until the last minute to make his ‘insertions.’
This developed after Co broke his silence Friday to claim that Marcos, through former Speaker Martin Romualdez, Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, and Presidential Legislative Liaison Office Undersecretary Adrian Bersamin, maneuvered to insert P100 billion at the bicameral conference committee deliberations for the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Co made his assertions in a five-minute video sent to reporters and uploaded on Facebook Friday morning.
But ‘if he (the president) had, say, pet projects worth P100 billion, then he should have included that in the National Expenditure Program (NEP),’ Tiangco said, referring to the spending plan crafted by the Executive through the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and deliberated by Congress.
Tiangco said that while he was in no position to deny Co’s allegations on behalf of the President, he recalled a November 24, 2024, meeting with Marcos, Romualdez, and himself when the President supposedly berated Romualdez for the ‘massive corruption’ happening in Congress.
In that meeting, which lasted for one and a half hours, Marcos supposedly confronted the Speaker about projects allegedly removed from the NEP and the growing corruption allegations in the House.
‘In the 30 years that I’ve known him, that was the first time that I saw him mad,’ Tiangco said. ‘He was really fuming.’
Marcos then read from a list of NEP projects that he claimed had been removed or altered without the executive’s knowledge, and which he read directly from his cellphone.
Tiangco said the meeting reinforced his belief that any irregularities in the 2023-2025 budgets were between Romualdez and Co.
‘Everything that went wrong. only Martin should answer for it,’ said Tiangco, who is also his cousin-in-law.
Also, Tiangco said Co’s assertion that he could only accommodate P50 billion in insertions for the President contradicted the much larger amendments the House eventually pushed.
At one point in his video, Co claimed that he approached Pangandaman to ask whether it’s possible to include only P50 billion from the President’s request and the rest would be placed in the unprogrammed funds instead, which is also subject to the approval of the Office of the President.
‘But how can it be that he could only do P50 billion, when the House managed to do P209 billion in insertions?’ Tiangco pointed out, referring to the various changes that Congress made to the NEP in its own version of the budget bill.
Co’s timing, Tiangco said, suggested the former congressman was trying to deflect accountability for accepting kickbacks from anomalous projects.
‘He did not deny that he received money, even if he said he didn’t get any for himself. What he is trying to do now is frame someone else, that he passed on the money he got,’ said Tiangco.
He argued that if Co truly wanted to prove his allegations, he should release the full documentation of the small committee that handled the budget insertions.
Tiangco, who has been pushing for the revocation of Co’s passport, must also come home and subject himself to formal legal processes, such as putting his testimony under oath.