BUDGET FOR PLUNDER BEGINS AND ENDS WITH THE PRESIDENT

BUDGET FOR PLUNDER BEGINS AND ENDS WITH THE PRESIDENT

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s expected signing of the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA) this week is the final act in the passage of a rotten, pork-laden, and repressive national budget that clearly serves corrupt political dynasties, entitled legislators, favored contractors and bureaucrat capitalists as a whole at the expense of the people’s interests, welfare and development.

The formulation of the 2026 budget began and now ends with Marcos Jr. His National Expenditure Program, which already carried massive discretionary and lump-sum items plus “allocables” for legislators, was further inserted with pork barrel and patronage funds by Congress and is capped with his signature that enacts a budget to be implemented by an Executive fully complicit in preserving corruption and political patronage.

Hindi puwedeng ihiwalay si Marcos Jr. sa bulok na badyet na ito. By signing the 2026 GAA, he takes responsibility for every part of it, including its wrong priorities, its distortions, and its ugly consequences.

The final 2026 GAA retains hundreds of billions of pesos in questionable and high-risk pork barrel allocations, including P243 billion in unprogrammed appropriations, more than P200 billion in bloated “soft pork” aid programs such as AICS, MAIFIP, TUPAD, Tulong Dulong, and LGU pork, plus billions more in infrastructure projects vulnerable to kickbacks and political manipulation, more than P11 billion in confidential and intelligence funds, P8 billion in NTF-ELCAC pork projects, and expanded military spending aimed at repression and a failed counterinsurgency program rather than addressing its causes rooted in social injustice. These line items have been explicitly flagged as risky, patronage-driven, or constitutionally questionable, yet they have been allowed to remain in the enrolled bill sent to Malacañang.

While Marcos may announce selective line-item vetoes, BAYAN stresses that these can only be cosmetic. Partial vetoes are designed to appease public mistrust and create the illusion of reform while leaving intact the overall architecture of corruption embedded in the 2026 budget.

Kahit may line-item vetoes, kung buo at buháy pa rin ang sistema ng pork barrel at patronage, walang makabuluhang pagbabago. The President will not veto substantial portions of the budget nor dismantle its most dangerous foundations. What will remain is a GAA structurally engineered to reward loyalty, consolidate dynastic power, and guarantee profits for corrupt public officials and favored contractors while ordinary Filipinos face rising prices crumbling public services, and shrinking democratic space.

By signing the 2026 GAA, Marcos ensures the implementation of a law that will entrench corruption, deepen inequality, and bankroll repression.

BAYAN reiterates its call on the Filipino people to reject the 2026 GAA, expose its pork barrel underbelly, and resist the normalization of corruption and repression masked by empty rhetoric about “people-centered” governance.

Ang badyet na ito ay hindi para sa mamamayan. ito ay para sa magnanakaw at mapaniil na estado. Lahat ng sangkot—ang nagpanukala, ang mga kumalikot at nag-apruba, at ang pumirma—ay dapat managot.#