GOVERNANCE MATTERS Former Vice President Jejomar Binay The unprecedented performance of our athletes at the just-concluded Tokyo Olympic Games has given us a much-needed respite from the non-stop barrage of depressing news. We emerged from the Games with one historic gold courtesy of weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz, and two silvers and a bronze from our feisty national boxing team. This is our biggest medal haul yet since joining the Games. The rest of the lean contingent, exemplary athletes all, set personal bests and record-breaking performances. These have kindled hopes for the next Olympics, provided, of course, that government will finally come to its senses and give sports development its rightful due. By this I mean generosity in providing funds for training, and investing in the development of young athletes, especially unpolished gems from the provinces. For decades, government’s idea of a sports development program is to build arenas and other sports-related infrastructure projects, often undertaken at huge costs to taxpayers. Needless to state, several of these big-ticket projects are magnets for scandals. Recall the “kaldero” of the Southeast Asian Games that we hosted before the pandemic. The structure cost P50 million, but  was used only once. Not even the pandemic was able to moderate the insatiable appetite for infrastructure. Infrastructure received the lion’s share of the 2021 budget, at the expense of health services and other health-related interventions needed to control the spread of the pandemic. The budget also did not include allotments for cash aid or “ayuda" for the poor. Funds were, instead, allotted separately for a host of emergency programs under Bayanihan 1 and 2. Despite the emergency nature of these programs, however, the processing and disbursement of funds encountered delays. When Bayanihan 2 expired, for example, anywhere from P9 billion to P18 billion were left undisbursed and reverted to the National Treasury. The country has experienced several surges in infections since March 2020, when the presence of COVID-19 was officially confirmed by health authorities. Entire regions and provinces have been placed under lockdown, or to be precise,  lockdowns of varying levels of severity that remain in force. Metro Manila has gone through three hard lockdowns, the latest having been declared last August 6. The economic costs have been astounding. With each passing month, life for most Filipinos have become more unbearable. It was no surprise, therefore, when Pulse Asia reported that nine out of 10 Filipinos expressed dissatisfaction with government’s response to the pandemic, based on a survey they took during the early part of June. This was a sharp reversal from September last year, when eight out of 10 Filipinos said they approved of government’s handling of the pandemic. Clearly, the Filipinos’ much-celebrated resilience has reached its limits. But our situation is growing increasingly bleak. All eyes are now on the proposed 2022 budget, which the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) has yet to transmit to Congress as of this writing. The public has not been given a preview of next year’s spending priorities. The only bit of information, as revealed in the Senate, is rather distressing. Supposedly, the proposed budget for the administration’s anti-insurgency campaign will be increased to P40 billion. One senator called the allocation an “election bonanza,” since 2022 will be an election year. In the absence of a formal preview, one can only search for cues. Those who watched the State of the Nation Address (SONA) noted that the administration’s high-profile infrastructure program was singled out for praise. This could only mean that the 2022 budget will still set aside billions of pesos in infrastructure projects. And for many observers, those billions for infrastructure, in an election year, would not only be a bonanza but an extravaganza. Should these turn out to be prescient observations, the unavoidable conclusion is that this administration has placed its own interest as the top spending priority. In the face of a pandemic and a crippled economy, it would rather spend precious people’s money not on the people, but on its political survival. [email protected]