By Diego Morra
Social Watch Philippines (SWP) has spent decades demanding that the annual government budget be stripped of its grease, and the dirty fingers of politicians and bureaucrats be stopped from dipping into the unprogrammed appropriations (UAs) as well as infrastructure projects that end up as white elephants, incomplete or never started at all.
SWP has repeated the same plea this year under the leadership of co-convenor Dr. Marivic Raquiza, who has warned that the Filipino people’s patience is wearing thin over the latest edition of the Corruption Opera, the barnacle that renders administrations past and present to be so ugly that it has to be stripped away forever if the country were to progress, guided by a civic culture that considers plunder as a scarlet letter that cannot be excised from the bosom of its criminal practitioners.
This time, Raquiza and SWP are training their fusillade on the revolting action of the Budget Amendments Review Sub-committee (BARSc), which realigned ₱255 billion from the graft-ridden Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to the following: ₱26.53-billion to Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP); ₱32.06-billion to Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations (AICS), and; ₱14.82 billion to the Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD.) All told, these aid programs secured ₱73.41-billion of the people’s money.
While the Ayuda para sa Kapos at Kita Program (AKAP) of former House Speaker Martin Romualdez has been excised since it was managed by a party-list accused of using the funds for political gain, which is similar to the program of Sara Duterte Zimmerman to organize 977,000 people among the urban poor in Metro Manila as her political base, it does not make the BARSc realignment virtuous or even necessary since funds for charity and social and economic relief should not be handled by politicians or that their disbursement controlled by congressmen and senators for the benefit of their ward leaders. It is revolting why Sen. Christopher Lawrence Tesoro “Bong” Go has been gifted with a ₱3-billion budget insertion since as a senator he is not entitled to personal appropriations; neither is he entitled to have a franchise on the so-called Malasakit Centers that duplicate the functions of the Department of Health (DOH), PhilHealth and the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD.) Go’s job is to craft laws and not festoon his image and name on Malasakit Centers. Replicating this Boy Kodigo tactic on the MAIFIP, TUPAD and AICS is shameless, particularly when these doleouts have little oversight and weak accountability protocols, as Raquiza bewailed.
SWP argued that the Marcos Jr. administration cannot convince millions of Filipinos that he is serious in achieving his vow to end the plunder of the annual budget unless he can stop elected officials and bureaucrats from slicing the budget to line their pockets, finance the ostentatious lifestyles of their nepo babies and bankroll the operations of their political dynasties. It stressed that year-in and year-out it had analyzed the annual general appropriations acts and warned about the misuse of discretionary aid programs, with hundreds of millions of pesos allocated to finance the accomplishment of more nonsense in their patronage politics.
Raquiza reminded Malacanang that the recent disclosure of Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong that politicians aligned with the administration were able to access pooled funds worth around ₱30 million or P7 million each from AKAP, TUPAD, and MAIFIP, if they participated in campaign sorties or backed Palace allies in the 2025 national elections. Officials from DSWD) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) also admitted during the same Senate hearing that the rules for the distribution of doleouts are unclear, Worse, they do not have the lists of beneficiaries and do not know how they were vetted. In short, hundreds of thousands Mary Grace Piattoses are resurrected.
Raquiza said these doleouts should stop. The best way to provide medical financial assistance to citizens is by increasing public investments to PhilHealth and the hospitals of the Department of Health (DOH) hospitals so they can better provide Zero Balance Billing (ZBB.) The MAIFIP program duplicates the functions of DOH hospitals and medical centers operated by local government units (LGUs.) “Instead of sustaining questionable allocations, these billions can be redirected to life-saving programs like Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) prevention, including tobacco control. A 2019 World Health Organization (WHO) study revealed that investment in the prevention and control of NCDs could prevent the premature deaths of more than 350,000 people and contribute to our economic growth over 15 years,” Raquiza revealed.
She explained that the TUPAD and AICS programs could be exemplary social protection measures that should be provided by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD) without any intervention from politicians. “Our aid programs should be TRAPO-proof and EPAL-proof. However, some lawmakers act as if the money is coming from their own pockets, as if giving ayuda is a political favor. That is pure patronage politics. Worse, there are reports that a part of the funds is even being pocketed. Let us always remind ourselves that government aid is ours by right, not by favor, especially since it comes from taxpayers’ money,” said Raquiza. These trapos, like soiled diapers, must be changed regularly.
