Davao del Norte First District Rep. Pantaleon Alvarez, lawyer Ferdie Topacio, Partido Demokratiko Pilipino (PDP) senatorial bet lawyer Jimmy Bondoc, Citizens Crime Watch, and others file a motion before the Ombudsman on Wednesday seeking to preventively suspend Speaker Martin Romualdez and others for graft and falsification of legislative documents over the alleged billions worth of insertions in the 2025 national budget.
Among the accused are Representatives Mannix Dalipe of the Second Legislative District of Zamboanga City, Elizaldy Co of Ako Bicol Partylist, Stella Quimbo of the Second District of Marikina, and two others.
In the Motion for Preventive Suspension case, Alvarez cited Republic Act (RA) 6770 of the Ombudsman Act of 1989, Section 24, which states that the Ombudsman “is vested with power and authority to preventively suspend any officer or employee pending his investigation.”
“Thus, the Ombudsman or his Deputy may preventively suspend any officer or employee under authority pending an investigation, if in judgment the evidence of guilt is strong, and (a) the charge against such officer or employee involves dishonesty, oppression, or grave misconduct or neglect in the performance of duty; (b) the charges would warrant removal from the service; or (c) the respondent’s continued stay in office may prejudice the case filed against him,” Alvarez cited RA 6770 Section 24.
On February 10, the group also filed criminal and graft cases against Romualdez and others before the Office of the Ombudsman for alleged P241 billion worth of insertions in the 2025 national budget.
Alvarez, who is a former Speaker of the House during the Duterte administration, stressed that no amount of P241 billion was approved in the Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam) report and it was not approved by the plenary either for the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Last month, Davao City Third District Representative Isidro Ungab bared that the GAA 2025 is anomalous.
Ungab disclosed that some figures in the Bicam report were missing like in the agricultural and fisheries modernization program of the Department of Agriculture (DA) wherein the budget for the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) and the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) were not indicated.
Ungab affirmed several blank items still need to be supplied with figures amounting to billions of pesos in the GAA 2025 under the DA namely NIA, the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Program, the Agricultural Input and Services, the National Program for Rice, Corn, High Value Crops Development, Organic Agriculture, Livestock and Peri Urban Agriculture, Small Scale Irrigation Projects, Agricultural Machineries Equipment and Facilities, Production Support Services Sub-Program for Rice and Corn, the National Fisheries Program, Provision of Fishery on Farm/ Post Harvest Equipment and Fisheries, PCA, Subsidy for National Irrigation Systems and Communal Irrigation Systems and under the Unprogrammed Appropriations.
