15/08/2026
Matanda na si kabayan Manong Manny B may health issues pa sa palagay nyo po magsisisnungaling pa ba yan?
â±24-BILLION âLEADERSHIP FUNDâ EXPOSED: BONOAN TESTIMONY PUSHES BUDGET CONTROVERSY DEEPER
Former DPWH chief describes an internal mechanism for senatorsâ priority projects; Palace says Marcos did not know about the fund itself
MANILA â August 14, 2026 â The controversy surrounding billions of pesos in public-works appropriations has entered a potentially more consequential phase after former Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan described before the Sandiganbayan what he called the âSenate Leadership Fundââan internal DPWH mechanism allegedly used to accommodate senatorsâ priority infrastructure projects during preparation of the governmentâs proposed national budget.
Bonoan said the arrangement emerged after President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. became alarmed over substantial congressional cuts and insertions affecting DPWH projects. According to Bonoan, the department sought what he described as an âinnovative wayâ to protect priority infrastructure while accommodating legislatorsâ proposed projects. The mechanism operated at the National Expenditure Program stage, an important distinction because the NEP is prepared by the Executive before being submitted to Congress for deliberation.
The numbers immediately raise the political stakes. Bonoan testified that senators had access to at least â±500 million each for priority projects, while the Senate president and chairpersons of major committees could receive allocations reaching at least â±1 billion. Reporting on his testimony places the overall mechanism at as much as â±24 billion, although the amount actually utilized was reportedly lower.
Bonoanâs account is especially significant because this is no longer merely an accusation exchanged during a congressional investigation or political press conference. The assertions emerged from a former Cabinet secretary in proceedings before the Sandiganbayan, giving investigators and the public a specific mechanism, figures and potential documentary trail that can now be independently tested.
But the testimony does not establish that every senator committed wrongdoing. The existence of legislator-recommended infrastructure projects is not, standing alone, proof of corruption. The decisive questions are whether the projects served legitimate public purposes, whether appropriations followed constitutional and statutory requirements, whether legislators exercised impermissible control over implementation, and whether any allocation was ultimately connected to kickbacks, ghost projects, favored contractors or diversion of public money.
Several senators have disputed implications arising from Bonoanâs testimony. Senator B**g Go, for example, denied submitting the project list attributed to him, while other senators have rejected suggestions of wrongdoing. Those denials make the underlying DPWH records increasingly important: project lists, endorsements, correspondence, allocation matrices and the movement of individual projects from departmental proposal to the NEP and ultimately the General Appropriations Act.
Senator Panfilo Lacson has gone further, describing the Leadership Fund mechanism as worse than the traditional pork-barrel system and calling for its abolition. Lacson says the arrangement was no longer carried into the 2026 national budget, making the 2025 spending plan its final appearance.
A second and potentially explosive question now concerns what the Executive knew. Bonoan says the mechanism developed after Marcos expressed concern about massive changes affecting DPWHâs proposed projects. Malacañang, however, says the President was unaware of the specific Leadership Fund disclosed by Bonoan. These statements are not automatically contradictory: Marcos could have known about budget cuts and insertions without knowing that DPWH subsequently created this particular allocation mechanism. But the distinction now demands documentary clarification.
For OPTIC Politics, this is where the investigation becomes substantially more serious. The issue is no longer simply, âWho inserted what during congressional budget deliberations?â The emerging question is whether an organized system existed before the proposed budget even reached Congress, through which legislatorsâ preferred infrastructure projects could already be accommodated within the Executive-prepared spending program.
If Bonoanâs testimony is corroborated by DPWH records, investigators could potentially reconstruct the entire chain: who requested a project, who endorsed it, who placed it into the proposed budget, how much was allocated, which contractor eventually received the project, whether the project was actually completed, and where the money ultimately went.
That documentary trailânot political rhetoricâwill determine the real significance of the Leadership Fund.
The country has heard enough accusations about âinsertions,â âallocables,â âpriority projectsâ and âpork.â Bonoan has now provided investigators with something more valuable: a description of an alleged system and a roadmap for finding its records.
The next phase should therefore be forensic.
Follow the project. Follow the appropriation. Follow the contractor. Follow the money.
