A lawmaker called on the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to impose measures that would ensure full transparency on the discussions for the proposed national budget of fiscal year 2027.

With deliberations on the P7.2-trillion National Expenditure Program (NEP) set to begin on Monday, 17 August, ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. Antonio Tinio raised alarms over a possible repeat of the “performative” process that was used for the 2026 budget.

The particular system that Tinio was pointing out was the livestreaming of the bicameral conference committee, noting that the live feed that was meant to provide openness only exposed the traces of corruption that were still present in the NEP.

“We need true transparency in the budget process, not the same spectacle that the President himself announced last year. When Marcos Jr. announced that the bicam meetings for the 2026 budget would be livestreamed the public thought that there would be change,” he said.

“What happened? The pork barrel insertions and bloated Unprogrammed Appropriations remained intact,” he added.

The solon argued that the decision to broadcast the meeting that came from Marcos himself was nothing more than “damage control,” arguing that the process was still clearly rigged to impose the pork allocations for certain legislators.

He stressed that if such a process were still allowed to persist, the evident corruption in the budget would still survive and be included in the 2027 General Appropriations Act (GAA) that would be passed.

“Livestreaming won’t remove the pork in the 2027 national budget. Even if they livestream the bicam again, the unprogrammed appropriations and other forms of pork barrel will remain intact,” he said.

Tinio mentioned that it was in the very same bicameral meetings that the P48 billion Local Government Support Fund was inserted, a fund that he said were a different form of pork barrel insertions.

Reiterating his call for transparency, Tinio asserted that true transparency could only be met through dismantling of all mechanisms that allowed for insertions to be implemented claiming that installing cameras could not resolve the issue.

“The Marcos administration cannot hide behind performative transparency while perpetuating the same corrupt budgetary practices that have robbed the people of genuine public services and development,” he stated.