Mahiya naman kayo, BBM, Sandro jeered
People cheered when President Bongbong Marcos in his 2025 State of the Nation rebuked lawmakers, “Mahiya naman kayo!” He claimed then to be fed up with their pork barrels in the form of fake and faulty flood control projects. Constituents were suffering deluges and disease.
BBM named 15 contractors who cornered bulk of the flood funds in his admin’s first three years, 2022-2025. Those funds exceeded P1 trillion since 2016, including six years under president Rody Duterte. Lawmakers and DPWH officials had plundered up to 50 percent kickbacks. Fifty-two have since been indicted, including six past and present lawmakers, the DPWH secretary and a usec and 31 regional and district engineers.
Retired generals, bishops and civil society led a series of protest demonstrations nationwide.
Lawmakers should’ve stopped any more pork barrels. But they didn’t. Congress passed a pork-laden P6.8-trillion budget for 2026. The Supreme Court declared unconstitu-tional two porky provisions of the 2026 budget, along with Unprogrammed Appropriations in 2024 and 2025.
Now the P7.2-trillion budget for 2027 is still porky. People’s Budget Coalition uncovered P1-trillion pork insertions. Breakdown:
• P210 billion “soft pork” or political ayuda;
• P695 billion “hard pork” or political infrastructure and
• P112 billion “shadow pork” or Unprogrammed Appropriations.
The P210-billion “soft pork” is further broken down into:
• MAIFIP, stolen by lawmakers from PhilHealth for doles via guarantee letters for constituents’ hospital bills;
• AKAP, to be doled out by lawmakers through DSWD;
• TUPAD, or job placements for indolent political wards and
• Presidential Assistance for Farmers and Fisherfolk.
Like in 2024 preparatory to Election 2025, those will be given out to lawmakers’ constituents in 2027 as part of Election 2028 vote-buying.
The P695-billion “hard pork” is further broken down as:
• P190-billion DPWH road and flood works;
• P6-billion farm-to-market roads under DA, at least five of which have map coordinates in surrounding seas or Africa and
• P499-billion commissionable constructions of health clinics under DOH and irrigation canals under NIA.
The P190 billion in DPWH consists of 7,000 projects inserted by congressmen. None of the 7,000 have supporting documents like program of work, costings, feasibility stud-ies or endorsements from regional, provincial, city or municipal officials.
BBM’s son, House Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, got the biggest chunk of the P190 billion. BBM’s 2027 budget initially allotted P400-million DPWH projects for Sandro’s Ilocos Norte 1st district. The House committee on appropriations, of which Sandro is ex-officio member, increased it 12-fold to P4.8 billion.
“Mahiya naman kayo!” people howled at BBM and Sandro.
The appropriations committee chairwoman and two vice chairmen got the second, third and fourth biggest pork slabs.
On Oct. 12, 282 congressmen approved the P190-billion DPWH pork. They too got pork shares.
Only 13 voted “no.” Three of them also got pork slabs, and dissented only for show.
BBM kept silent. Presumably on his instructions, the Malacañang spox defended Sandro’s P4.8-billion insertion in DPWH: “If a congressman’s projects are well-executed and the allocated funds are used properly, who would oppose this, especially when these funds are sufficient to improve a district.”
Although a lawyer, the spox disregarded the Supreme Court’s 2013 declaration of pork barrels as unconstitutional. The SC identified pork as “ambiguous lump sums,” “for projects at the discretion of individual lawmakers instead of Congress as a body,” “for implementation by them instead of the executive.” Pork thus contradicts Charter pro-visions on separation of powers and on accountability.
This week senators said they will scrap the 7,000 insertions worth P190 billion if DPWH cannot produce supporting documents. It doesn’t matter if presidential son Sandro gets hurt in the pocket, they harrumphed.
Big deal! Even if senators scrap the entire P190 billion, congressmen will still have P810-billion pork. Remember that the latter inserted P1 trillion in “soft,” “hard” and “shadow” pork.
The P190 billion is only one of four kinds of P695-billion “hard pork.” How much in other types of pork do members of the House supermajority, led by Sandro, have?
That’s for Filipinos to investigate because congressmen won’t tell. In that work, people can be guided by Rabindranath Tagore’s prayer:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high,
Where knowledge is free,
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments,
By narrow domestic walls,
Where words come out from the depth of truth,
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection,
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way,
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit,
Where the mind is led forward by thee,
Into ever-widening thought and action,
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”
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