Pork rebranded
The PDAF crossed the separation of powers by allowing legislators to participate in the execution of the budget, a power that belongs exclusively to the executive branch.
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The PDAF crossed the separation of powers by allowing legislators to participate in the execution of the budget, a power that belongs exclusively to the executive branch.
The “allocables” system is the latest mutation in the 2026 General Appropriations Act (GAA) of a culture of corruption that has outlasted every administration that promised to end it.
Every few years, the pork barrel system, the practice of funneling public infrastructure money to political patronage, is repackaged by merely renaming it.
In 2013, the Supreme Court (SC) issued a landmark ruling declaring the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), or pork barrel, unconstitutional.
The PDAF gave individual legislators an annual lump-sum allocation of P200 million for senators and P70 million for congressmen, which was basically a slush fund to keep alliances intact and to sanction foes.
The Court held that the PDAF crossed the separation of powers by allowing legislators to participate in the execution of the budget, a power that belonged exclusively to the executive branch.
Under the Constitution, Congress’ role ends once it passes the appropriations law.
Today, the latest iteration is called “allocables,” a resurrection of the pork barrel stripped of even the pretense of oversight.
The mechanics are the same as previous versions. The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) assigns each congressional district a budget ceiling or an infrastructure menu from which the district representative may choose.
The arrangement is indistinguishable from what the SC struck down in 2013 — which were discretionary public funds distributed along the lines of political loyalty rather than need.
More alarming in the budget are the so-called “non-allocables,” which are project funds assigned to districts without a fixed allocation and, according to the whistleblowers — a legislator and a former department undersecretary — without the knowledge of some of the congressmen in whose districts they are “parked,” or so they claim.
The practice of “parking,” or lodging a project in a district to launder it through a budget item, sometimes with a fee paid to the hosting lawmaker, is another mechanism for pilfering public funds.
The DPWH has reluctantly released the full list of non-allocable projects, which contradicts the government’s post-Floodgate reform posture.
The estimated P1-trillion flood control scandal involved ghost infrastructure and fake projects under the DPWH.
Transparency, in this administration, happens only when the cameras are on.
The budget data revealed that the largest allocations flowed to the congressmen closest to the Palace occupant.
Meanwhile, political opponents saw their allocations drastically reduced, if not zeroed out in the 2026 GAA.
Compounding the opacity is the so-called BBM Parametric Formula, a 16-page document purportedly used to calculate district allocations.
The SC ruling has failed to dislodge the underlying architecture of discretionary spending and the political rewards that make scandals like Floodgate not only possible but inevitable.
A full public accounting must be required of every allocable and non-allocable item by addressing the questions of who authorized it, who benefited, and by what formula.
Legislators who refuse that accounting should be asked, plainly, what they are hiding.
The notorious pork barrel survives because traditional politicians remain deeply corrupt, while leaders at the apex of government are either complicit or choose to look the other way.
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