On April Fools' Day

COMMONSENSE

- MARICHU A. VILLANUEVA

The timing could be off, or just coincidental. The Supreme Court (SC) originally set tomorrow the oral arguments on the petitions against the alleged illegal "insertions" in the 2025 budget law. It falls on April 1, a date dubbed as April Fools' Day. Incidentally, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. (PBBM) declared April 1 as an official holiday to mark the Islamic Eid'l Fitr on the sighting of the first full moon of the month.

Since tomorrow is a non-working holiday in all government and private offices nationwide anyway, it is for obvious reasons the SC needed to adjust their previously scheduled calendar. The SC, headed by Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo, also agreed on the new dates for the oral arguments on other state-related petitions pending before them.

As rescheduled, the 15-man High Court will hold their summer en banc retreat to tackle the resumption of oral arguments on the petitions against the transfer to the National Treasury of P89.9 billion from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth). As earlier announced by the SC, the oral arguments on PhilHealth would continue on April 2 and 3, and April 4 if necessary, at the SC compound in Baguio City.

The oral arguments on the alleged illegalities that went through the approval of the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) were reset to May 19. The petition claimed irregularities and purported "blank" line items in the bicameral conference committee (bicam) report on the 2025 GAA. Petitioners also argued that the GAA was unconstitutional for failing to allocate mandatory funding for PhilHealth, unlawfully increasing appropriations beyond the President's recommendations and allocating the highest budget to infrastructure over education.