By Camille Diola

Good morning.

Today's briefing is about contrasting occasions where billions of public funds were released expeditiously and when these came in trickles.

Billions in one blow

Calls to defund the controversial NTF-ELCAC or the National Task Force Ending Local Communist Armed Conflict received 56% or 10.86 billion of its P19-billion budget in two months. Of which, P7.54 billion was released in April alone.

That's a lot of money to let out in such a short time and during a pandemic when cash aid ("ayuda") to poor families would encounter delays and when health workers have to plead for dialogue and the swift release of their benefits.

Also, we've been hearing remarks like this*:

A senator asked, what's with the rush?

• Calls to defund the agency grew louder late last month after its officials wrongly accused organizers of community pantries of belonging to the communist insurgency.
   
• Other senators identified possible "double disbursements" in the P19-billion allotment and called out to review whether the task force makes "judicious use of scarce government resources."
   
• Interior Secretary Eduardo Año asked senators not to realign the funds for the NTF-ELCAC, arguing that those go to barangays being cleared of "communist terrorists."

For now, the NTF-ELCAC has billions to spend and billions more to receive while its two spokespersons are prohibited from speaking about the pantries. While senators deliberate on whether to defund the agency, a bill criminalizing red-tagging is also pending with them.
 

Go, fish

China's ban on fishing which started May 1 does not and should not cover areas of the South China Sea. Filipino fishermen can then go out and catch food, the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea said.

U.P. maritime law expert Jay Batongbacal had said that encouraging local fishermen to conduct their daily activities in Philippine waters is among the non-violent ways to assert the country's sovereignty over China.

The question now is: Will the Philippine Coast Guard escort our jittery fishermen in their exercise of rights, as the professor suggests?

In other developments:

• Chinese maritime militia vessels seen at Sabina (Escoda) Shoal off the coast of Palawan have dispersed after a series of challenges by the Philippine Coast Guard.
   
• Businessman Albert del Rosario, who as foreign affairs secretary filed and won the arbitration case against China, said the president didn't have to promise to retake the West Philippine Sea. It's Duterte's duty to do so.