Public funds must go to people’s needs not Marcos-Duterte clique’s pork barrel and black budget

This article is available in Pilipino

Indeed, the Marcos-Duterte regime is nothing but a continuation of its predecessor. Even its budget priorities reflect the same ugly picture – bureaucrat capitalists hand-tailoring the national budget to fit their agenda of unbridled corruption and fascism.

This clique of the ruling few knows no shame. It barefacedly slashed allocations for socioeconomic development and then allotted the bulk of the public coffers to projects where their hands can plunge/dip the deepest. And predictably, the Filipino nation is once again at the short end of the stick. To pay for their expensive whims, the masses would be squeezed for even more and higher taxes, oppressed and exploited to their bones amidst recession and incessant inflation.

Highlights of the 2023 budget allocation includes the P49.1 billion cut in social protection funds for families and children, unemployment and housing among other, which they had the gall to call a ‘waste of public funds’. The agriculture sector, one of the most important foundations of the national economy, got a measly P184.1 billion compared to the staggering P1.196 trillion budget for infrastructure. Confidential and intelligence funds for 2023 otherwise known as the black budget ballooned to P9.6 billion from P1.7 billion in 2016. This multi-billion black budget is literally a blackhole, with no oversight, this will be once again used for militaristic and anti-people programs.

Alas, who else but the two highest officials claimed the lion’s share of the people’s hard-earned money. Marcos II’s presidential pork barrel amounts to a whopping P2.8 trillion. This is 54% of the total national budget. Meanwhile, VP Sara Duterte will be controlling a total of P712.9 billion for her office and Dep-Ed. The OVP’s budget was even approved without any questions out of courtesy. It bears to ask then where this courtesy is, this sense of consideration, when it comes to the common people.

Once again, this rotten state proves itself nothing but a playground of the rich and ruling few. While poor families die in poverty and starvation, the Marcoses, Dutertes and their faithful ilk bask in the fruits of the toiling masses’ sweat and blood.

NDF-Bikol supports the mass movement in their opposition of Marcos-Duterte regime’s willful misprioritization of public funds. It is their right to scrutinize how these so-called elected officials spend the people’s money and demand that their needs be fully taken cared of first.

In the end, the only way to break the cycle is to shatter the system that allows these bureaucrat leeches to breed and perpetuate themselves to power. The people must take the path of the armed revolution and strive for its complete victory. Only until then can the nation be decisive of their own funds and ultimately, their own destinies.

Public funds must go to people’s needs not Marcos-Duterte clique’s pork barrel and black budget