“Once again, it’s a budget for survival politics”
ONE of the best broadcast journalists of our time, Ted Failon, keeps stating “walang pagbabago” to describe what is happening to the state of the nation, as he chronicles the lack of meaningful change early on and till now.
No words describe the country under the present dispensation better.
Congress promised reform in the budgetary process. They even livestreamed the deliberations of the notorious bicameral conference committee, and indeed, we heard some senators bristle about the GAB produced by their counterparts in the HoR.
But behind closed doors, in private huddles replete with bargaining for “acceptable” middle ground, the bicam produced what the president’s sister, the one with the creative intellect, described as one replete with pork, though minced to somehow hide the liempo.
“Giniling na baboy,” she calls the produce of the bicam, approved by viva voce and silenced microphones in the lower House and sailed through the Senate with the minority simply giving up on what to them was a waste of time and effort to dispute in plenary.
The Senate President effusively called the 2026 GAA as “the cleanest in history.” Even his buddy Joey de Leon would have chided him for “higop.” In contrast, the low-key Speaker was more modest in his praise of their collective produce.
The President for his part did some cosmetic cuts in the unprogrammed appropriations, if only to make believe he went through (again!) 4,000 pages.
But “giniling” is as giniling does, his Manang Imee would claim, even if administration bigwigs praise it as “embotido,” wrapped and insulated from corruption, though spiced with lots and lots of ayuda as “recados.”
The hard “convergence” projects that used to be implemented by the DPWH were either assigned to DA and DepEd, principally because the department of hard pork has been flooded out by corruption most unexplainable.
Worse than de-funding DPWH and foreign-assisted projects that truly matter, such as the North-South commuter railway line and the much-ballyhooed Metro Manila subway (after all these are projects initiated by the “hated” previous regime), our legislators ground the budget into very soft fat, as in MAIFIP, Tupad, and AICS.
Development economics? Forget it. It’s not an economic plan for the people. Once again, it’s a budget for survival politics.
From now till late 2027, current leadership will be transfixed at survival sans any appreciable legacy.
It needs to “anoint” replacement in the 2028 elections, one who stands a chance to somehow neutralize the geographical advantage of the frontrunner from the South, and one who can be trusted to “protect” the outgoing regime from feared “resbak.”
Meanwhile, the public awaits, somewhat bored, for who and when the “big fish” will be dunned.
Instead, on the first working day of the year, police arrested a retired police general, Romeo Poquiz, for alleged sedition, denied the presence of his lawyers. Is he the big fish that never was?
The ICI chair is still wondering whether to pack up and just help manage historic Aristocrat Restaurant, a far better legacy that honors the distinguished name of his forebears better than the diversionary “palabas” to which he starred.
Cathy Cabral who decided to leave the world on her own terms, after what her lawyer calls undeserved humiliation for merely “following orders,” is now haunting the department she served for four decades.
Ghoulish the DPWH will be for the next two and a half years, and “mahiya naman kayo” will be unable to shame the shameless.
Now we will not get to know whether the proponent OP (ES/SAP) in the list is really the former ES or just a codename for someone else, just as whether SAP is the husband of beauteous Dawn Zulueta or in truth Secretary Amenah Pangandaman.
After her colleague of equal rank pointed an accusing finger at her, neither the Blue Ribbon nor the ICI bothered to hale Cabral to confirm, corroborate or refute the Bernardo confessions.
Neither were her files preserved as documentary evidence, with an upstart congressman beating government to the draw, exposing documents he took from her office more than three months ago.
Only in da Pilipins, where nothing is ever real and is just all about optics.
Convinced that she was being used as scapegoat and failing to get the ears of the high and mighty to listen to her defense, she finally decided to take her own life, or so her lawyer avers.
Ghoulish the DPWH will be till 2028, and “mahiya naman kayo” will be unable to shame the shameless.
Wala namang pagbabago, Cathy must have ultimately concluded, so goodbye Philippines.
