CARTOON BY: AARON PAUL C. CARIL
EDITORIAL
The 2026 Ground Pork Budget: Seasoned with self-interest
Lawmakers insist on calling the proposed ₱6.793 trillion 2026 national budget a “People’s Budget,” as though a clever label could magically transform pork into public service. They tout transparency, livestreamed hearings, and expanded social programs, hoping the public will confuse performance with sincerity. But the varnish is thin. Beneath the branding lies a familiar structure of opaque insertions, unprogrammed funds, and allocations shaped not by national priorities but by political appetites.
The soft pork programs remain generously marinated. Billions continue to flow into AICS, MAIFIP, TUPAD, and other “assistance” schemes that reliably flourish during election cycles. Watchdogs warn that pork barrel-type items may exceed a trillion pesos, buried in unprogrammed appropriations and infrastructure projects that resist scrutiny with remarkable consistency. Yet defenders of the budget insist these are all for the people—because nothing says “public service” like a spending plan the public cannot trace.
Even Congress cannot maintain a united front. Senator Imee Marcos refused to sign the bicameral report, calling the 2026 budget “ground pork” and objecting to both the ₱124 billion cuts to foreign-assisted flagship projects and the realignment of removed flood control funds into politically sensitive soft pork programs. Her critique was blunt: long-term, internationally funded infrastructure was sacrificed to feed short-term political convenience. When insiders start calling the budget processed pork, the marketing campaign begins to look like self-parody.
The 2025 budget should have been a warning. It was riddled with questionable insertions, weighed down by dubious flood control projects, and ultimately exposed by the administration’s own vetoes. The flood control scandal that followed revealed ghost projects, favored contractors, and billions in unspent funds, all while communities endured real flooding. Yet instead of reform, the 2026 budget offers the same ingredients, repackaged with a new slogan and served with the same smug insistence that this time, the intentions are pure.
Local politics adds its own flavor of irony. One legislator proudly announced having “sponsored” billions in 2025 projects, prompting mayors and board members to sing their hallelujahs as though national funds were personal gifts. Missing from the celebration were any denials of kickbacks or explanations of how personal wealth expanded so generously during the term. But why bother with accountability when applause is easier to orchestrate than transparency?
All this unfolds under an administration grappling with collapsing trust ratings and a public increasingly unwilling to accept slogans as substance. A genuine People’s Budget would be transparent, defensible, and grounded in public—not political—priorities. What we have instead is a document shaped by motives that hide behind good intentions. Until leaders choose integrity over theatrics, the “People’s Budget” will remain exactly what it is today: seasoned with self-interest, served with a smile, and sold as reform.