President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s decision to live-stream the bicameral conference on next year’s general appropriations is proof he plays a decisive role in drafting a corrupt national budget, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN) said.
The group said that Marcos’ statement confirms his direct involvement in the process and should not escape accountability in the corruption revealed by various investigations on anomalous flood control projects, the group said.
“He is involved in every step of the budget process, and his recent pronouncement about the bicam underscores his absolute power on how the budget will be finalized,” BAYAN said.
Marcos in a briefing on Thursday said he intends to make public the 2026 joint congressional budget deliberations to “further encourage transparency.”
“We will live-stream the entire process so that if there are questionable, shall we say, insertions or additions or all that — it will also be clear who moved, who made those changes or who proposed those changes. So that people will know,” he said.
BAYAN however said the president’s order means he is aware of the suspicious and anomalous projects inserted by his allies in both chambers of Congress.
Earlier, ACT Teachers’ Party Rep. Antonio Tinio said the approved House of Representatives (HOR) version of the 2026 national budget is full of “presidential pork,” accusing Marcos of perpetuating the corrupt use of public funds.
Tinio said that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in an “unprecedented scale and abuse,” approved nearly 4,000 infrastructure projects worth P214.4 billion under so-called unprogrammed appropriations.
Based on obtained data from the Department of Budget and Management, Tinio said the Department of Public Works and Highways received P61.4 billion in unprogrammed appropriations in 2023 for 1,889 projects, and P153 billion in 2024 for 1,811 projects.
The HOR approved a P6.793-trillion 2026 budget bill on third and final reading last Monday that includes over ₱243 billion in unprogrammed appropriations.
“Ganito po ang unprogrammed appropriations – parang may isa pang infrastructure budget entirely. Sa panahon na lang ng budget execution, napupunuan ng halos 4,000 bagong proyekto,” Tinio said.
BAYAN said it was Marcos who made sure that his pork barrel projects are still embedded in next year’s national budget.
“Organizing the bicam is not supposedly part of Marcos Jr’s duties as chief executive. But he is desperate in trying to appease public anger against large-scale corruption that is why he wanted to claim that the budget process will be transparent,” the group pointed out.
“In the end, he only exposed himself as the real operator calling the shots in the budget process and the mastermind of the pork barrel insertions,” it added. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
