Our General Appropriations for 2025, a.k.a. the national budget, has been under fire in recent weeks. It started even before this year, when many departments of key social services had their budgets decreased in the proposed bill while Congress increased its own budget.
After that, there was the decision to provide zero subsidy for Philhealth (the public health insurance service that millions of Filipinos depend upon) while increasing the allocation for “ayuda,” the cash assistance program for poor families. For context, ayuda is normally seen as a good thing except when the intentions behind them are suspect because of the coming election season.
There is an internet meme that seems appropriate: a tiger taking away a donkey’s leg and then donating to him a pair of crutches.
More recently, allegations have been made that the signed bicameral report for the national budget had line items that had blank appropriations. The implication is that Congress signed what was essentially a blank check, and someone filled in those blanks before submitting the final version to the President.
As of writing, the issue has yet to be fully clarified. At worst, it smells of corruption. At best, it smells of incompetence or complete disregard for the protocols set by the Constitution. Either way, this is a serious matter because the General Appropriations passed by Congress is not just some mundane budget. To those who believe in the idea of the nation and in the ideals of public service, the national budget is nothing less than sacred. Thus, the betrayal of this duty is nothing less than profanity of the basest sort, an attack against society’s civil religion.
Civil religion consists of abstract ideals that we, as citizens, commonly hold dear. As Filipinos, we believe in the nation. Serving the nation is our sacred duty. The Constitution of the Philippines is civil religion’s equivalent of the Bible.
“Public office is a public trust,” according to Article XI, Section 1 of the Constitution. That’s another way of saying that, in terms of civil religion, public service is sacred because it’s not just another job or corporate position. The end-goal of public duty is to serve the nation. Our representatives and senators in Congress have a sacred duty. They are supposed to take seriously what is mandated in our Constitution.
And it just so happens that our Constitution—our nation’s civil Bible—takes the General Appropriations very, very seriously. It provides for a process, it assigns specific duties to the executive and legislative branches of government, and provides checks and balances to ensure the budget’s integrity, that it will serve the goals of the nation and not the personal interests of certain parties.
So when unknown parties manipulate the budget process for personal interests, it is a betrayal of the highest order. And we, the people, should not be taking it lying down.
In a democratic society, it is we, the people, who are sovereign. Not the politicians. Not Congress, not the President. We don’t work for them. They work for us. Their sacred duty is to serve the nation. And when they betray the nation, it is only right that we rise in indignation and outrage.
It is unfortunate that we as a people have gotten used to corruption. We are numb to the pain of betrayal from those sworn to serve us, and it takes a lot to get us outraged.
But this, the desecration of our General Appropriations, is quite a lot! The budget is the main lifeline of our nation: the source of our children’s education, of key services for our communities, of stimulus for our economy. The root word for “appropriations” is the verb “to appropriate,” which means to set apart for a purpose, and that which is “set apart” is the very definition of what is sacred because it is separated from mundane, everyday reality. A national budget that serves the people is our sacred right, set apart for us by the Constitution that has determined its process and requirements and entrusted it to elected officials for whom, supposedly, “public service is a public trust.”
So let us allow ourselves to be outraged. Write your senators or representatives. Join indignation rallies. Educate your peers. Collaborate with watchdog groups and the media. Let your government know that this cannot stand, that justice demands punishment for evildoers and betrayers.
Le us express our protest on the streets and in whatever way we can push back against the wholesale robbery of our National Treasury.
Maybe something will come of it, maybe not. But we can’t just do nothing when unholy forces within our own government flagrantly violate the ideals of our nation until there is nothing sacred left. – Rappler.com
Joseph Nathan Cruz formerly served as an Assistant Professor in the field of Behavioral Sciences before moving from academia to the cooperative sector. He has a master’s degree in sociology from the National University of Singapore and is also currently studying law under the Juris Doctor program of the University of the Philippines College of Law. He currently writes for the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture and works as head of quality management systems for a financial services cooperative.