Symbiosis

After all the country suffered in the wake of the flood control scandal, the congressmen are at it again. Funds from regular public services were again shifted to pet projects distributed according to congressional districts.

The Supreme Court boldly ruled unconstitutional the practice of pushing regular expenditures to the “unprogrammed” category, thereby ensuring funding for pet projects. Undeterred, the congressmen repeated the scheme that had the effect of inflating the budget total.

It is not that our legislators learned nothing from the monumental infra scandal that continues taking a deadly toll on our economy. It is that they need to skim from the budget to survive the coming election year.

Three decades ago, Jose Almonte, then national security adviser to former president Fidel Ramos, aptly described our politics. He said we have a “pork barrel state” and this is the root of all the evil that traumatizes us.

We have a weak political party system for a reason. Political allegiance is not built on shared adherence to a program of government or a vision of the country’s future. Political support is mustered through transactional politics. Which is to say money politics.

Without effectively functioning political parties, elections are won on the basis of sheer name-recall in a contest were all contenders promise a bottomless cornucopia of state- sponsored social goods. Reliance on name-recall opens the way to celebrity politics. The political economy for this is fairly straightforward: the better known the candidate, the less campaign resources are necessary to build recall.

Our weak political party system is, therefore, a measure of the vitality of transactional politics. Voters are loyal to a candidate, not any party program.

Once elected, the winning candidate is expected to deliver patronage goodies to his voters. This is the popular notion of “public service.” It is not to build the nation. It is to distribute the subsidies.

Transactional politics is expensive. Constituencies expect to be pampered in between elections. Voters expect to be courted by the politicians. They expect elected officials to broker the delivery of services in their favor. This is why politicians are involved by way of guarantee letters for patients even if we have, in principle, universal health care. Elected officials are supposed to have financial aid ready for everyone in need.

Trapped in transactional politics, governments tend to spend way more than they earn. A pork barrel state cannot be fiscally prudent. Because of the nature of our politics, the Philippine government is driven into unsustainable debt.

We have seen the recent riots in France. With an outstanding debt that is bigger than its economy, the French government has lost the fiscal headroom to fulfill its end of the presumed social contract. With an aging population, government finds it more politic to spend for pensioners than invest in education. Thus the riots among the young.

This is an explosive situation. It repeats itself in many other countries where distinct constituencies compete for a larger share of the public spending pie. Whether in Kathmandu, in Jakarta or in Paris, the increasingly difficult economic conditions will make the young feel disenfranchised.

In our own case, the budget debate has the potential to spark unrest.

The House of Representatives hijacked the budget. They took money out of foreign-assisted projects, education and health to make way for 7,000 petty district projects. This is, of course, an election-year budget.

But in hijacking funds for strategic infrastructure, such as the commuter rail system, the congressmen’s interest run against the interest of the section of the elite that depends on national constituencies. The executive branch wants funding for its legacy projects restored. The senators will want funding for health and education left intact. In a season of scarcity, a battle looms between those who need to keep their home constituencies happy and those who want the agencies of national government adequately funded.

We have been hearing a lot of brave talk from senators about purging the 2027 national budget of all the insertions made by the Lower House – including that fantastic infra fund set aside for the President’s son. We will see next week, when plenary deliberation happens at the Senate, if the senators find the courage to wipe away all the distortions in the House version of next year’s budget.

The pork barrel state will fight back. They will remind the ruling faction that the congressmen’s ability to deliver the votes depends so much on their getting their way with the budget allocations.

The camp of Marcos Jr. might not be ready to wage a budget war against the congressmen. These district-level politicians, after all, effectively constitute the electoral machinery of a presidency whose public approval ratings are now under water. Without the support of the congressmen, Marcos Jr. has nothing. His electoral endorsement is, as things stand, a kiss of death.

But congressional support is contingent on the district-politicians getting their share of the gravy train. They need money to indulge in money politics.

Thirty-five of our most influential business associations have put out a statement demanding that the congressional insertions be stripped out. This is unprecedented. Over the next few days, spokesmen for civil society groups will flood media channels with horror stories about the congressional budget insertions. They will hold vigil over the budget hearings and the bicameral conference committee.

But money politics involves a deleterious symbiosis.