‘Walang hiya, walang kulong‘
The perversion of Congress was at its worst after the Marcos administration took over, where pork projects became a commodity.
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The perversion of Congress was at its worst after the Marcos administration took over, where pork projects became a commodity.
From being a marketplace of ideas, the Philippine Congress has degenerated into a wholesale flea market for corruption. If there is to be a sincere effort to hold corrupt officials accountable, it must begin at the top of the pyramid.
Focusing only on lower-ranking players while leaving the principal decision-makers untouched does little to dismantle the system that enabled abuse.
Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco, a guest on DAILY TRIBUNE’s online program Straight Talk, argued that unless the “big fish” are brought to account, practices such as the revival of the pork barrel system will continue to resurface, regardless of leadership changes.
The perversion of Congress was at its worst after the Marcos administration took over, where pork projects became a commodity, he said.
According to Tiangco, congressmen who wanted to secure more projects for kickbacks looked for Ako Bicol Representative Zaldy Co, who got 20 percent for each project inserted in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) or the President’s budget.
“It only became public in 2025, but this had supposedly been happening since the discussions on the 2023 and 2024 budgets,” according to Tiangco.
“When I returned to Congress in 2022, we were already discussing the 2023 budget. That’s when I first heard about the buying and selling of projects,” he said.
Every district already has a basic allocation in the yearly budget, but an additional P200 million to P300 million worth of projects is provided through Co for 20 percent of the commission.
The racket was available even to a contractor who would identify the projects to be inserted into the budget.
“We initially thought the scheme happened in the Bicameral Conference Committee (Bicam), but according to what I found, much bigger insertions occurred as early as the NEP,” Tiangco revealed.
The Executive appears to have learned about it after the controversy over the 2025 national budget erupted, claimed Tiangco.
It was then that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. directed the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to mark the inserts as “For Later Release” (FLR) items.
“The President didn’t veto the budget, but instead, because of the controversy, he ordered all questioned insertions placed under the FLR,” Tiangco said.
The FLR has the same effect as a line-item veto, except the projects remain in the budget but are not implemented.
“As far as I know, by the end of July 2025, around P60 billion worth of House insertions had not been implemented out of approximately P209 billion that had been placed under review because they were considered questionable,” Tiangco said.
The urgent task for the government is to prosecute all those involved in the manipulation of the budget, even at the risk of decimating high officials in government.
If no major personalities are ultimately convicted in this case, Tiangco warned the issue will cool down and later people will become emboldened enough to do it again.
“But if they see that neither power nor influence can save them, then perhaps this kind of corruption will finally stop,” he said.
It has been a year since President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared in his State of the Nation Address, “You should be ashamed.” Yet the follow-through has fallen far short of the expectations that statement raised.
If meaningful action still fails to materialize, the political backlash could be severe. Strong words, unaccompanied by equally decisive measures, risk being dismissed as rhetoric.
As the President prepares to deliver this year’s SoNA on Monday, the public is watching closely.
Whether he presents concrete steps to match last year’s admonition will determine if “Mahiya naman kayo” is remembered as a turning point, or merely an empty refrain.
