Cardinal David vs Ralph Recto? | Michael and Morgan Say

Fresh from finishing his four-year term as president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David thanked the high court for its unanimous decision ordering the government to return the funds to the state health insurer.

However, if the order to return means that the government would get the money from the proposed 2026 national budget, then, “No thanks,” the Bishop of Kalookan said.

“The people have been robbed—still the people have to pay?” he said in a Facebook post. “How is that not a kind of double jeopardy—at least in the moral sense? The public was robbed once, and now we are being told to foot the bill again? This is unacceptable.”

The 15-0 decision of the Supreme Court should also not be used both by the executive and the legislative branches to just “backfill the stolen money through future appropriations,” he said.


David suggested that the court take “one step further” by directing the government to recover the diverted funds from public officials and private contractors tagged in the flood control kickback schemes.

The Supreme Court should also order the government to reimburse PhilHealth and the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) directly from the frozen, garnished or seized assets of individuals who “masterminded or benefited from this scandal” in addition to criminal charges, David said.

“Anything less only reinforces the culture of impunity that allowed this massive theft to happen in the first place,” he said.


“This is about justice–for every worker whose PhilHealth contributions were stolen, every depositor whose safety net was endangered, and every Filipino whose taxes are constantly held hostage by corruption disguised as ‘flood control,’” he said.

Ambiguous

The petitioners hailed the high court for affirming that public health funds “must be safeguarded, transparent, and used solely for the people’s benefit.”

The court voided Special Provision 1(d), Chapter XLIII of the 2024 GAA and the Department of Finance Circular 003-2024. The Special Provision authorized the return of “fund balance” or excess reserve funds of government-owned or -controlled corporations to the National Treasury.

The special provision was ambiguous because its concept of “fund balance” was not defined in the 2024 GAA, the high court said.

The P60 billion was part of the state health insurer’s then P89.9-billion unused funds.

PhilHealth itself welcomed the decision and also thanked the high court.

“Just as what we have said before, whatever will be the decision of the court, we will gladly accept it,” PhilHealth spokesperson Israel Francis Pargas said in an interview with dzBB radio.

Even before the Supreme Court’s ruling, Raquiza recalled that the House had already set aside P60 billion for the PhilHealth benefit improvement package under the proposed 2026 budget in compliance with the President’s order to return the funds.

On Ralph Recto

However, this cannot be considered as restitution, Raquiza said, adding that this again would be in the form of “taxpayers’ money” used to pay “for the fund that was stolen.”

Cardinal David also criticized Executive Secretary Ralph Recto, who was the finance secretary who pushed for the fund transfers, insisting that it was legal under the 2024 GAA and was a “common-sense approach” to avoid new borrowing and to finance important government programs.

“What we are really witnessing is common nonsense,” David said in another Facebook post.

“If the money had at least been transferred to the Department of Health for programmed and clearly identified health expenditures, there might have been some room—however debatable—for fiscal justification,” he said. “But that is not what happened.”

“The funds were funneled into unprogrammed appropriations, most of which—as the Supreme Court itself noted—were generic insertions for DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) flood control projects, bearing no relation to PhilHealth’s mandate or to public health,” David pointed out.