While Congress leaders insist that the P6.793-trillion 2026 national budget approved by the bicameral conference committee is finally pork-free, budget watchdogs say the assurances ring hollow.
A coalition of civil society groups argues that pork has merely changed form — shifting from overt project insertions to bloated ayuda-based patronage programs lodged within key social agencies.
These include the Tulong Dunong Program of the Commission on Higher Education; the Medical Assistance for Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients of the Department of Health; the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situations of the Department of Social Welfare and Development; and farm-to-market road projects under the Department of Agriculture.
The bicam approved P2 billion for Tulong Dunong, now centralized under CHED instead of state universities and colleges. The scholarship program grants students from families earning below P400,000 annually a P7,500 stipend per semester — assistance that, while laudable in intent, is vulnerable to political manipulation when centrally controlled.
MAIFIP’s budget more than doubled from Malacañang’s proposed P24.2 billion to P51.6 billion. The House initially raised it to P49.2 billion, the Senate to P28.4 billion, before the bicam pushed it even higher. A similar pattern emerged with AICS, whose allocation ballooned from P27 billion to a final P63.8 billion. Farm-to-market roads likewise saw funding more than double, from P16 billion to P33 billion.
For Adolfo Jose Montesa, co-convenor of the People’s Budget Coalition, the pattern is unmistakable. “Nagkaroon tayo ng pag-bloat ng budget para sa soft pork o ayuda-based patronage programs,” he said, noting that while traditional “hard pork” has become politically risky, soft pork has flourished.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III bristled at claims that the 2026 budget is pork-laden, pointing to safeguards such as the removal of guarantee letters from lawmakers and explicit prohibitions against legislators influencing the distribution of medical or cash aid. Senate finance committee chairman Sherwin Gatchalian has likewise assured the public that mechanisms are in place to prevent a repeat of the flood-control scandals that plagued previous budgets.
But assurances alone are no longer enough.
The 2025 budget, widely described by experts as the most corrupt in history, triggered investigations into trillion-peso flood control projects allegedly riddled with anomalies involving sitting senators and congressmen. These scandals unfolded despite similar promises of safeguards.
Lawmakers should also remember that the Supreme Court has already spoken. In its landmark 2013 ruling, the Supreme Court declared the pork barrel unconstitutional for allowing post-enactment, non-oversight intervention by legislators in budget execution. The decision was prompted by a special audit of the Commission on Audit that exposed massive abuse of the Priority Development Assistance Fund, culminating in the infamous PDAF scam allegedly masterminded by businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles.
Yet from 2022 to 2025, Congress cut more than P1 trillion from the national expenditure program, mostly from strategic infrastructure, transport and agriculture, and diverted funds to graft-prone local projects such as flood control and drainage. These unprecedented reallocations not only upended longstanding budget norms but also effectively sidestepped the spirit, if not the letter, of the 2013 ruling.
If the 2026 budget is truly pork-free, then lawmakers should finally be liberated to do what the Constitution mandates: legislate. Will we now see senators and congressmen focusing on crafting better laws instead of cultivating vote banks through ayuda? And if they are no longer distributing cash and favors, will more competent, policy-oriented candidates finally stand a chance in future elections?
History gives reason for skepticism. Politicians distribute ayuda not purely out of compassion, but to ingratiate themselves with voters, and, too often, to skim off a share before the crumbs reach the poor. Until Congress proves it can break this cycle, claims of a pork-free budget will remain little more than a convenient fiction.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
This column also appeared in The Manila Times
