UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
For weeks and even months now, we’ve been witness to political spectacles as in hearings in the senate and congress. First was the investigation of POGOs, which stirred quite a hornet’s nest, leading to the President banning all of them. Then it shifted to an investigation of Bamban Mayor Alice Guo, who is apparently a Chinese mole of sorts.
Lately, it was the congress launching its own investigations in aid of legislation, focusing on the budget requests of the vice-president and the subsequent discoveries of disallowed transactions and intriguing questions about who Mary Grace Piattos is.
Of course, all the muck about how and where the confidential funds were spent on took front page news, leading to the rejection of the OVP request for more of the same. Recently, we learned that 405 of the 677 recipients of the OVP confidential funds were non-existent, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority, including the famous Mary Grace Piattos. Other names that elicited derisive laughter were Chippy MacDonald, Fernando Tempura, Carlos Miguel Oishi and Raymunda Jan Nova. The person/s who coined these names were certainly avid snackers of these brand names. Talk about creativity.
It didn’t help that the vice-president had a series of meltdowns in press conferences including one where she uttered death threats (conditional but threats just the same) against the President, First Lady and Speaker of the House. She is now the subject of an impeachment complaint for a list of 24 articles, in four categories of graft and corruption, bribery, betrayal of public trust and other high crimes. After all her fiery bravado, she’s crying political persecution.
This segued into investigations on the extrajudicial killings during the Duterte presidency, which was really not news, since we already read and heard about them way back when Leila de Lima was a senator, who was truly politically persecuted, made a spectacle of, and finally imprisoned for almost seven years for bogus charges of drug dealing. She is finally free, no thanks to the usual delays in our judicial system which moves at a glacial pace.
While these are all noteworthy and educational as to how public funds were being siphoned off to certain people’s pockets, via cash withdrawals of hundreds of millions of pesos in cash stuffed in duffle bags and “given” to persons in disparate areas of the archipelago all on the same day, all these happenings serve no purpose other than providing distractions which are the equivalent of the Roman circuses of ancient times. They serve to divert attention from more pressing and vital matters such as high food prices, poverty and poor health benefits.
While all these were going on, the bicameral committee approved the final version of the 2025 national budget. It is 10.1 percent higher than this year’s budget but will have less to offer for health, education and other funding for the poorest of the poor. Aside from slashing the OVP budget by ₱1.3 billion (but still leaving the OVP with ₱733 million), it will reduce funding for state educational institutions like UP (less ₱26.912 billion), the DSWD (less ₱95.923 billion) and the Department of Health (less ₱25.795 billion), specifically for its support for indigents. Specialty government hospitals’ budgets were also subject to cuts (₱558.4 million less for the Philippine Children's Medical Center, ₱197.9 million less for the Philippine Heart Center, ₱139.2 million less for the National Kidney and Transplant Institute).
The Department of Agriculture stands to lose ₱9.2 billion in 2025, mainly for irrigation, raising questions as to how this will affect food prices in the future.
But, lo and behold, the Department of Public Works and Highways budget increases to ₱1.111 trillion, while infrastructure projects are mainly concentrated in the National Capital Region, Central Luzon and Region 4, which are the least poor. It is said that most of the corruption happens with infrastructure projects and it certainly raises eyebrows due to its sheer magnitude.
Here's another eyebrow raiser. Unprogrammed funds which were originally only (really) ₱158.665 billion was increased by Congress to ₱531.665 billion. This insertion of an additional ₱373 billion was agreed upon by the bicameral conference committee and is considered a last-minute insertion since it went over the requested amount by the Office of the President. But this is really not surprising considering 2025 is an election year and this version of the pork barrel will be sourced from the funds impounded from PhilHealth among other agencies.
So, there you have it. There will be less on the table for the poor Filipino and more for their overlords. In Roman times, you at least got bread in addition to circus. In the Philippines, circus is all you get.