Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III on Sunday, November 5 reiterated his stand that the Office of the President should be given zero intelligence funds under the proposed P5.768-trillion national budget for 2024.

Pimentel insisted that departments or government agencies that are well-versed in intelligence gathering should be entitled to such grants and not an executive department that has no primary mandate for criminal law enforcement.

“It must be the department or the agency that is well-versed on intelligence matters (that should have confidential and intelligence funds) and they should (be the ones to) report to the President,” Pimentel said in an interview on Radio DZBB.

“The President (should be) the consumer of the intelligence (information) gathered by these agencies,” he pointed out.

Under the proposed 2024 national budget, the OP is requesting P2.31-billion worth of intelligence funds and P2.25-billion confidential funds, similar amount to the current fiscal year.

The same, he said, should be done to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) and other agencies whose mandate does not involve national security or law enforcement.

The President, he said, should focus on other things and not on intelligence gathering.

“He should no longer have any time for that. Whom does the President needs to spy on? Fellow Filipinos? That can’t be used for politics. That’s why I suggest that the Office of the President be stripped of intelligence funds,” he stressed.

But he is open to giving the OP “reasonable amount” of confidential funds which they can use with flexibility.

“We can allow that but it should be within reasonable bounds. The amount of confidential fund should also be reasonable,” he reiterated.

Pimentel also said the Senate minority bloc also agrees on the need for the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to have confidential funds because they too, are involved in the country’s national security and should be able to advise President Marcos properly on foreign policies.

“We are a bit open-minded when it comes to giving the DFA some flexibility,” he said, but not the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).

Pimentel stressed intelligence funds should go to agenices like the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) so they can carry out their mandate to fight criminality in the country.

The DICT, he said, should prioritize fixing and improving the security of government online websites and boost Internet access in the country.

At the same time, he said the minority bloc, will ask the Senate Majority not to rush the passage into law of next year’s proposed budget.

“I will ask (Senate finance committee) chairman Sen. Sonny Angara tomorrow and ask if we can phase the deliberation on the proposed budget so we can have time to scrutinize all agencies’ budget thoroughly and provide quality intervention,” Pimentel said.

“The people are also looking forward to it. There is already a technology, the proceedings are done livestream. The people also want to understand the budget process, how it is done, how the funds are spent, where and how much is spent by the government. The essence is so important,” he said.