In 2025, expect a tidal wave of “ayuda” (financial aid) from politicians in the run-up to the May polls.
Patron-client relations define Philippine politics. This has roots in the Spanish colonial era, and in the 21st century this manifests in the way politicians view themselves as their constituents’ patrons, giving gifts and cash in return for support and votes during elections.
Patronage will get a turbo boost this year since politicians secured ample funds for ayuda in the 2025 budget. Here are some of the more prominent ayuda programs:
- Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP) under the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD): P26.159 billion
- Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged Workers Program (TUPAD) under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE): P18.289 billion
- Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation or AICS program: Found under the DSWD’s Protective Services for Individuals and Families in Difficult Circumstances (PSIFDC), which got P44.744 billion
AKAP was introduced in 2024, but TUPAD and AICS are old programs of the DOLE and DSWD, respectively.
Apart from these, there are smaller ayuda projects spearheaded by Speaker Martin Romualdez, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s first cousin, together with allies in Congress:
- Start-up Investment Business and Livelihood Program (SIBOL)
- Cash Assistance and Rice Distribution (CARD)
- Integrated Scholarships and Incentives Program (ISIP) for the Youth
- Farmer’s Assistance for Recovery and Modernization (FARM)
Let’s go through each of these programs so we can understand better the big wave of ayuda that will crest in 2025.
AKAP
Former DSWD secretary Erwin Tulfo, a strong contender in the 2025 senatorial race, claims he was the one who thought of AKAP. Lawmakers seriously took notice of AKAP in the crafting of the 2024 budget, and they said AKAP could be the government’s way to help Filipinos whose incomes have eroded because of the steep rise of inflation starting 2022.
You can think of AKAP as a scaled-up version of the pandemic-era AICS, which gave out food, medical, education, and even funeral subsidies for indigents (but not necessarily inflation-related).
AKAP was allotted P26.7 billion under the DSWD’s budget for 2024, and was launched on May 18, 2024. As of January 2025, nearly five million Filipinos nationwide have benefitted from AKAP, and over 99% of the funds for 2024 have been given out. In the 2025 budget, Congress again allotted more than P26 billion for AKAP.
There’s nothing wrong with helping Filipinos cope with the effects of higher inflation. But there are many problems in the way AKAP has been implemented.
First, the inflation assistance came too little, too late. Prices accelerated in 2022 and 2023, and in 2024, just as AKAP was first distributed, prices had already stabilized. Full-year inflation in 2024 was 3.2%, well within the target of the government. It would’ve been better if the assistance came a lot sooner.
Second, there are plenty of reported leakages, which means that even nonpoor and undeserving people are getting the AKAP benefits (averaging P5,000 per beneficiary).
The DSWD maintains that they target minimum wage earners and near-poor Filipinos. But at the same time say that lawmakers and local officials can nominate beneficiaries, subject to vetting and verification of DSWD’s social workers.
On the ground, there are too many reports that barangay officials prioritize relatives and friends in the handing out of AKAP benefits, at the expense of legitimately poor families who have no connections whatsoever with the barangay officials.
The root problem is that government no longer maintains a nationwide database of poor households — what was previously known as Listahanan. Starting in 2024, this was replaced by the Community-Based Monitoring System, which mandates local governments to come up with their own lists of poor households, and which can be the basis of giving out aid. But without systemic vetting (e.g., proxy-means tests), local governments are making arbitrary lists that significantly raise the potential for leakages and patronage.
Together with the abundance of funds through AKAP and other ayuda programs, the lack of a proper targeting system paves the way for an explosion of patronage-driven transfers.
This brings us to the third point — that lawmakers aggressively handed out AKAP in 2024, presumably in a bid to promote and endear themselves to voters in the run-up to the May 2025 polls.
In November 2024, Speaker Romualdez and his friends in Congress even embarked on a “mall tour” to hand out AKAP money to beneficiaries. In one instance, the cash handouts came with five kilos of “premium, well-milled rice.” Listening to Romualdez, he was like a gameshow host giving out prizes in a noontime show.
One wonders: should lawmakers be doing this? Shouldn’t they be focused on lawmaking? If AKAP is truly a program of DSWD, why are lawmakers themselves handing out cash and goods?
TUPAD
TUPAD is an old program of the Department of Labor and Employment, launched in 2009. It’s a cash-for-work program meant to give emergency employment to those who lost their jobs.
Because unemployment skyrocketed in 2020 during the height of the pandemic lockdowns, TUPAD’s budget naturally ballooned in the 2021 budget — the first pandemic budget. But TUPAD’s budget only kept growing since then, and in 2024 it was allotted a whopping P28.867 billion — more than four times what it got in 2020. Then in 2025, it got P18.23 billion, a lower but still colossal sum.
Like AKAP, there are many questions about the eligibility of TUPAD beneficiaries. TUPAD had also featured prominently in politicians’ payout events 2024.
Many lawmakers are also misleading the public by framing TUPAD as a program of Speaker Romualdez. In a post on Instagram, Representative Janette Garin of Iloilo said, “Sa tulong ng DOLE TUPAD ni Kuya Martin Romualdez, marami ang natulungan…” Such brazen co-opting of long-standing government programs makes my stomach lurch.
AICS
Like TUPAD, AICS is another old program, but this time under the DSWD. It provides transportation, medical, burial, food and non-food, and educational assistance, in the form of cash or “guarantee letters.” Beneficiaries are supposed to be those victimized by catastrophic health events and calamities (whether natural or man-made).
In 2020, AICS got P8.7 billion, and lawmakers then wanted to institutionalize AICS or make it a permanent program of the DSWD. In later years, AICS also swelled to a mammoth P40.9 billion in 2023, and P26.7 billion in 2024. In 2025, it got P44.744 billion under the DSWD’s line item for Protective Services for Individuals and Families in Difficult Circumstances (PSIFDC).
Senator Imee Marcos, the President’s sister, became the face of AICS in recent years. In one payout in Bataan, she even brought with her a “Nutribus” from which she handed out nutribun — a bread associated with the dictatorship of her father, Ferdinand E. Marcos. (Did Speaker Romualdez get the idea of his “mall tours” and other events from his cousin?)
In the 2025 budget deliberations, Imee Marcos moved to delete her cousin’s AKAP program entirely from the budget, adding that it may be best to merge AKAP (Romualdez’s brainchild) with AICS (Imee’s pet ayuda project). But the bicameral conference committee resurrected the AKAP budget worth P26 billion.
SIBOL, FARM, CARD, ISIP
Not content with allocating giant funds for AKAP, Speaker Romualdez took it upon himself to steer Congress to allocate funds for smaller ayuda programs that he and lawmaker allies can distribute themselves — essentially bypassing (but on paper in partnership with) DSWD and DOLE.
- SIBOL involves cash assistance for micro, small, and medium enterprises.
- CARD aims to alleviate the burden of high rice prices on indigent families by providing financial assistance and affordable rice.
- ISIP provides financial assistance and opportunities to disadvantaged but deserving students.
FARM involves cash assistance for farmers who wish to buy farm improvements (rice farmers are also encouraged to sell their rice to the National Food Authority).
SIBOL, CARD, and ISIP have been distributed by Romualdez and allies under AICS, while FARM seems to have come from TUPAD (although in some reports it’s linked to AICS, too).
Over the past year, Romualdez and friends have assiduously toured the country to give out these minor aid programs. In Davao del Norte, near the Duterte clan’s turf of Davao City, the payouts ended with a “colorful, free, and fun thanksgiving concert.” In that single event, allegedly P913 million (nearly a billion pesos) worth of aid was given out.
What spending ban?
Hundreds of billions of pesos have been allotted for various ayuda programs in the 2025 budget. This is likely to serve as politicians’ war chest for legalized vote buying in the May polls.
There’s supposed to be a spending ban among national and local officials 45 days before the elections, precisely because transfers can be abused for electioneering. Unsettlingly, on January 8, 2025, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) approved the DSWD’s application to exempt AKAP, AICS, 4Ps, and dozens of other aid projects (28 in total) from the spending ban.
Can’t many of these ayuda payouts wait until after the elections? I’m afraid that by allowing this exemption, the Comelec itself is inadvertently (and ironically) paving the way for large-scale vote buying. At this rate, it may take several decades before we can even begin to wean ourselves from the prevailing ayuda culture. We have truly become an ayuda nation. – Rappler.com