BELGICA VS.

EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
Facts: These are consolidated petitions which assail the constituitionality of the Pork
Barrel System.
In 1996, the first controversy surrounding the “Pork Barrel” erupted. Former Marikina
City Represntative Romeo Candazo who was then an anonymous source blew the lid on
the huge sums of government money that regularly went into the pckets of legislators in
the form of kickbacks.
In 2004, several concerned citizens sought the nullification of the PDAF as enacted in
the 2004 GAA for being unconstitutional. Unfortunately, for lack of “any pertinent
evidentiary support that illegal misuse of PDAF in the form of kickbacks has become a
common exercise of unscrupulous Members of Congress,” the petition was dismissed.
Petitioners define the term “Pork Barrel System” as the “collusion between the
Legislative and Executive branches of government to accumulate lump-sum public funds
in their offices with unchecked discretionary powers to determine its distribution as
political largesse.”
The Court defines the Prok Barrel System as the collective body of rules and practices
that govern the manner by which lump-sum, discretionary funds, primarily intended for
local projets, are utilixzedthrough the respective participations of the Legislative and
Executive branches of government, including its members.
 BELGICA VS. EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
ISSUE: Whether or not the Congressional Pork Barrel System is unconstitutional.

RULING: The Congressional Pork Barrel System is unconstitutional that it violates the principle s of
constitutional provisions on (a) separation of powers; (b) non-delegability of legislative power; and (c)
checks and balances

The Court hereby declares the 2013 PDAF Article as well as all other provisions of law which similarly
allow legislators to wield any form of post-enactment authority in the implementation or enforcement of
the budget, unrelated to congressional oversight, as violative of the separation of powers principle and thus
unconstitutional.

Legislators cannot exercise powers which they do not have, whether through formal measures written into
the law or informal practices institutionalized in government agencies, or else the Executive Department be
deprived of what the Constitution vested as its own.