With prices of prime commodities spinning out of control, the people feel more on edge, aggravated even by a mysterious national budget bursting at the seams. Despite the rhetoric of safety nets or social dividends for the poor, the leadership threw the lifeline to the elites of the body politic. In reality, it’s the people who are left hanging out to dry when those entrusted with the bounden duty to exercise the power of the “purse” have lost their moral anchor and turned wicked instead.

It has now formed in the public mind that corruption to the nth power is not just an anti-Marcos narrative but a nightmare on Mendiola Street, no matter the denial of Malacañang regarding this “grand heist.” There might have been a midnight deal between the executive, which has the power of the “sword,” and the legislature, which has the power of the “purse.” As this develops, the judiciary, with its power of the “pen” as the arbiter of constitutional or legal issues, cannot intervene to immediately resolve the fiscal imbalance between programmed and unprogrammed appropriations.

Paradoxical as it may seem — some attest to having seen blanks while others attest to having seen everything filled in — there are conflicting references to a signed bicameral committee report and to a signed General Appropriations Act, where the former is an input to the latter. It has become clear in the budget process that it must have been during the “throughput” when the second-order transformation may have occurred —either as the handiwork of a magician or a great mathematician, if not both.

A crime, if it were, cannot be committed without a witness. The writings on the wall indicate a “grand heist,” which one veteran former senator described as the most corrupt budget ever, and there is no slowing down the train. Jarius Bondoc estimates that the government will go bankrupt and the Filipinos will go hungry at the very rate our “politicos and bureaucrats misspend” trillions of pesos each year by “budgeting more than revenues could match,” only to resort to local or foreign borrowings when things go south.

With all the discordant voices vented over quad media, the president ought to be in a dark place; meanwhile, he has threatened to “shut down everything” against any “destabilization move” catching fire amidst this state of chaos. As for what will happen next, hope is the only thing that people can hold onto, given the unsettling uncertainties right at the market scene, where retailers who bought at farmgate prices double their profits by over 100 percent. An earlier expressed policy of “shrinkflation” by the officialdom only incentivized profiteers to squeeze more bang out of every buck.

An evil genius started it all with the objective to totally neutralize the Dutertes as an emerging political power bloc. Both chambers of Congress did not hesitate to put the former president on “trial” for crimes against humanity nor Vice President Sara Duterte for non-disclosure of confidential funds’ spending, which galvanized into an impeachment move against her. The allegations against Du30 opened the doors for the International Criminal Court, using Interpol as a political maneuver, to acquire jurisdiction, whereas Sara’s impeachment was instigated by the left-leaning partylist representatives.

All told, it is never as if we all sit in the nosebleeds as this chaos unfolds.