First of a series

IT is traditional to start a new year on a high note, with a new hope for 2025, discarding the year past, its bad memories and upsetting events. I will not adhere to these rituals. I will digress with a bold declaration that 2024 was a bad year, and 2025 could be worse! Today's column is part 1 of a series that will continue to examine the politics of this country and its prospects in the coming year — and beyond.

It is a Filipino cultural attribute to always look for a silver lining behind dark clouds. We are resilient people, kind people, slow to anger and forgiving people. To endure, we must believe that things will look good next year — always, the next year; perhaps to alleviate the pains of the past and relieve the traumas. Thus, we are often taken advantage of by our political leadership. But the tragedy is we keep voting them back to power. Perhaps we really deserve the politicians we elect. We love to be "pa martir, martir."

Meantime, I will have to contradict the Jan. 1 editorial of this paper proclaiming a promising year ahead. "The Manila Times is looking forward with hopeful anticipation. In our view, the Philippines is beginning 2025 with remarkable strength. While we watch other, supposedly more robust democracies... struggle with political stability, we can take some pride that our political system is strong and sound... we must continue to strive to improve the efficiency, transparency, and moral character of our governance."

These words are a mockery of our system of governance, an insult to our people. I am sure my editors are honorable men and women and only have the best interest of the citizenry. But I maintain that our political system is bankrupt, and the moral character of the people who lead us is impoverished.

A bleak 2025

Similarly, Tatad's column, "Annus horribilis 2024" (TMT, Jan. 1, 2025), paraphrases the late Queen Elizabeth II's speech of her 1992 horrible year, when the three marriages of her children broke down, besieged by the relentless attacks of the British press on her family and a fire razing her Windsor Castle. Tatad refers to the natural calamities that devastated our country, killing thousands. But more intriguing was his description of the collapse of the Marcos-Duterte political alliance, condemning the Filipinos to a sad spectacle of the lowest kind of politics polarizing the country and tearing the people apart. He put it succinctly: "We are today a deeply divided nation. And it is the obscene fight for political power that has caused it."

My year-end three columns and my first for 2025 were an attempt at a way out of our centuries-old governance, a systemic anomaly that cried out for a complete political restructuring: "Our dysfunctional system" (Dec. 11, 2024); "The unitary-presidential system" (Dec. 18, 2024); "The parliamentary government" (Dec. 25, 2024); and "Political parties — the need for real ones" (Jan. 1, 2025). These are long-term solutions to what plagues Philippine governance. Not mere palliatives.

Senate/House hearings

In a travesty of justice masquerading as legislative hearings we were confronted with a performance reminding me of an appropriate Latin phrase of my high school years, "corrupti corrupti corrupti corrupti" (the corrupt investigating the corruption of the corrupt!).

These shameless inquisitors flaunting their million-peso Hermes-Birkins, Louis Vuitton, Patek Philippe, Rolexes and bespoke suits — a blasé display of their plunder. These thieves are the sycophants and subalterns of the House speaker, the house Torquemada ever salivating for the presidency succeeding his weak cousin's watch.

And the intended victim was VP Sara, who caused her people to dispense with hundreds of millions of pesos in two weeks and millions more unaccounted-for intelligence funds. And in her defense was her dramatic meltdown and gruesome threat to cut her ally's head off and his father's cadaver dug up and fed to the fish. This was a clever display of bizarre theater diverting the people from her own venality.

We are entertained by the intermittent meddling of the former president, accused of killing innocent lives during his presidency, covering his tracks as the "capo di tutti capi" — the drug lord eliminating the competition through his "EJK." And in the process seemingly protecting his congressman son's alleged involvement in the shipment of illegal drugs — in cahoots with the so-called Davao Mafia — a slur to Davaoeños. All these allegations, facts, plots and counterplots surfaced during these "hearings in aid of legislation."

And these, as we and other columnists have written ad nauseam, are the consequences of the fight between two powerful political dynasties. The Marcoses and the Dutertes are in a death struggle with the advantage to the former which is in possession of the legitimate tools handed to it by this dysfunctional system of governance — the budget process. And we are all caught in the middle, bamboozled to take sides.

The budget

The criminals in both congressional houses have employed as their weapon a legitimate tool, illegitimately framed — the P6.326 trillion "election budget," distorted by the complicit "third house" of Congress, the bicameral conference committee (bicam), reshaping the president's budget by changing its priorities, belying his proclamation that his budget was devoid of opportunities for corruption. Consider the following:

A failed attempt to slash the education budget, which constitutionally was to have the biggest slice; nevertheless, undermining its priorities with an accounting trickery to include the budgets of the Public Safety College, the PMA and the PNP Academy — bureaucracies irrelevant to the education department, to reach a figure of P1.055 trillion.

Increasing the DPWH's budget by an additional P263.9 billion to P1.007 trillion, the traditional milking cow of congressmen for various infrastructure projects in their districts — a lucrative source for corruption, leakages and rent-seeking commissions.

The defunding of PhilHealth's subsidy jeopardizes the sustainability of health care services and universal health coverage — endangering access by the poor and the indigent.

And the mother of scams, the P26 billion lump sum for the Ayuda sa Kapos ang Kita Program (AKAP) — the surreptitious congressional insertions similar to the unconstitutional "pork barrel" — with their graft and kickbacks built in. Nominally under the DSWD, Romualdez has become its face and the main beneficiary, together with his minions, for these election dole-outs.

And to neutralize the Senate objections, bribe the senators with P5 billion from AKAP — on top of the additional allotment of P1 billion to the Senate and P18 billion to the House budgets — with no justifications for the increases whatsoever, except that this is an election year.

To rub salt in the wound, Sara's OVP budget was cut by nearly two-thirds to P733 million. With her imminent impeachment, this could be the beginning of her political castration.

This budget could be the most corrupt in our country's history; except that we may still have the same dramatis personae after the 2025 elections as a result.

If this is the type of political system described by this paper's editorial as strong and sound, where our leadership holds the high ground, observing transparency bolstered by their moral character, then we are an accursed people!

May God/Allah help us!