“The Great Trillion Peso Shakedown": Of Congress, Funds,
Corrupt Bureaucrats, and the People’s Growing Backlash
In 2025, the Congress finds itself at the center of one of the largest corruption storms since the abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) a decade ago. What was once touted as a “new era” of clean budgeting has unraveled into a return of pork-barrel politics under new, more technical names—budget insertions, phantom or “ghost” projects, and misallocated infrastructure funds.
Recent disclosures reveal just how deeply entrenched this corruption has become. Finance Secretary Ralph Recto admitted that up to 70% of government funds intended for flood control projects may have been lost to corruption—amounting to P42.3 billion to P118.5 billion gone astray between 2023 and 2025. In a separate review, the President’s administration found that from 2022 onward, P545 billion allocated for flood control projects included numerous projects that were never built, substandard, undocumented, or otherwise unaccounted for. Alarmingly, only 15 out of more than 2,000 accredited contractors claimed about 20% of that budget.
On the ground, the fallout is obvious. A P55–60 million river wall project in Baliuag, Bulacan—listed in both the National Expenditure Program and the General Appropriations Act—has yet to show any construction activity more than six months after its scheduled start. Meanwhile, some very small municipalities have received flood-control allocations worth billions—far beyond their absorptive capacity—fueling suspicions that political patronage and private kickbacks are at work rather than genuine public need.
President Marcos Jr. has since ordered a freeze on new flood-control project funds for 2026 and instructed agencies to first exhaust the P350 billion allocated for 2025 before proposing more. Civil society groups, church leaders, and business organizations are calling for an independent investigation, warning that unchecked budget manipulation threatens not just infrastructure delivery but also public trust in government itself.
These cases show that while the names and mechanisms may have shifted away from the old PDAF model, the core problem remains: vast public fortunes being redirected through questionable budget insertions and ghost projects. The consequence is not just financial loss but erosion of public trust, stalled infrastructure, and real harm to communities subject to flooding and neglect.
The 2025 scandal underscores a painful truth: systemic corruption in Congress thrives on opacity and technical jargon. It is not enough to abolish a fund or rename a mechanism. Without radical transparency—open budget data, mandatory auditing of projects, and consequences for both legislators and contractors—these practices will simply evolve into new forms.
The current crisis should be treated as a turning point, not another passing controversy. Citizens deserve an end to the shell game of “clean budgeting” masking old habits. Congress, if it is to redeem itself, must embrace genuine oversight and accountability, not merely rebrand the pork barrel. The public, for its part, must demand more than platitudes: real reforms, full disclosure, and leaders who will prioritize service over self-enrichment.
The Mechanics of a Quiet Comeback
Despite constitutional checks and repeated reforms, budget manipulation remains Congress’s most enduring soft power. In the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), watchdog groups estimate at least ₱142.7 billion in last-minute “adjustments” — much of it for “hyperlocal” flood-control and road projects, inserted after the main budget hearings had concluded. This mirrors the “congressional insertions” of a decade ago, only now under new technical labels and more sophisticated paper trails.
Flood control, in particular, has become the prime example of how legitimate priorities can be exploited. Independent auditors and civil-society coalitions estimate that up to ₱1 trillion in such allocations between 2023 and 2025 has been overpriced, duplicated, or left unimplemented. Some towns with fewer than 50,000 residents have received flood-control allocations running into the billions — far exceeding their absorptive capacity and often routed to politically connected contractors.
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) have both faced criticism for their limited disclosure of project lists and contracts. Only a small fraction of contracts are publicly posted with full cost details, and many of the implementing agencies do not update their online transparency portals beyond the bare minimum required by law. This lack of visibility allows insertions to escape scrutiny until after funds are obligated.
The mechanics are subtle but effective:
• Hyperlocal projects (short stretches of drainage, small retaining walls, or isolated road segments) make it easy to divide funds into dozens or hundreds of small contracts that rarely draw national attention.
• Thinly capitalized contractors can be used as pass-throughs for larger political or business interests, masking the ultimate beneficiaries.
• Technical jargon and “realignments” obscure who requested a project or why costs ballooned between proposal and implementation.
This is not mere inefficiency. It is an entire system designed to redirect state resources away from national priorities — climate resilience, large-scale infrastructure, health, and education — and toward private or political gain. The opportunity cost is staggering: every peso siphoned off from flood-control or road funds means fewer evacuation centers, delayed railway construction, and underfunded public hospitals.
The persistence of these practices also undermines the government’s credibility on fiscal reform. In late 2024, the Marcos administration announced a “Budget Modernization” drive promising line-item transparency, yet by mid-2025, analysts noted that project clustering and “catch-all” categories had increased rather than decreased. This suggests that rather than dying, pork-barrel logic has adapted — moving from obvious lump sums to a granular, hyperlocal format that is harder to detect but no less costly.
Unless Congress voluntarily opens its internal budgeting process and allows real-time public scrutiny of insertions and adjustments, this quiet comeback will continue to siphon off resources and erode public trust. The question is not whether the system is broken, but how long voters will tolerate its reinvention under new names.
Congress Under Fire
The resignation of Martin Romualdez from the House Speakership has become the most visible sign yet that Philippine politics is entering a volatile new phase. It’s not just a single scandal but an entire architecture of influence and budget manipulation now under national scrutiny. His departure underscores a crisis within a crisis — an internal rift inside the ruling coalition, with rival factions maneuvering for control of the House and its lucrative budget powers.
Romualdez’s leadership had faced intensifying criticism over allegations that favored contractors were being steered to priority projects, especially in the flood-control and road sectors. Senators themselves have been drawn into parallel investigations over similar practices, and although all accused lawmakers deny wrongdoing, the pattern of allocations and the breadth of the inquiries are striking enough to shake public confidence in the legislative branch.
On the floor of the House, Romualdez announced his resignation during a plenary session, framing it as an act of transparency and accountability. He stressed that stepping down was not an admission of guilt but rather a way to allow the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI) to pursue its investigation without interference. In a political culture where resignations are rare, his move was interpreted both as a tactical retreat and a sign of how deeply the controversy had begun to bite.
Yet the damage goes far beyond any single politician or scandal. Every peso lost in post-approval budget insertions is a peso unavailable for classrooms, health centers, or disaster protection. Every ghost project erodes public trust and reinforces the perception that Philippine democracy is a transactional system incapable of delivering on its promises.
The political fallout, meanwhile, is reshaping the coalition math in real time. Romualdez’s exit gives the Duterte bloc an opening to consolidate power, even if the House majority remains broadly under the Marcos camp. At first glance, it’s tempting to dunk on Romualdez as he leaves the Speaker’s chair. But a step back reveals a more complicated picture: Philippine politics today would arguably look even darker without his earlier consolidation of the House.
Consider the turbulence of 2023. Then-Deputy Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Vice President Sara Duterte were rumored to be plotting to hijack Congress — weaponizing the budget and even floating impeachment to fast-track Sara’s path to Malacañang. That coup only failed because Romualdez built a majority coalition that blocked it. The same majority also cracked open Duterte-era scandals, from the misuse of “confidential funds” to suppressed data on the drug war’s human toll. Without Romualdez’s bloc, those probes would never have seen daylight.
Seen this way, Romualdez’s resignation is not only a personal reckoning but a pivot point for the Marcos administration and for Congress itself. It tests whether institutional reform can survive leadership changes, or whether old patronage networks will simply regroup under new names. For citizens and watchdogs, the stakes are clear: without sustained scrutiny, the resignation may be remembered less as a moment of accountability and more as the opening move in yet another power reshuffle.
The public now faces a choice: treat this as another Manila soap opera or as an opportunity to demand genuine transparency, not just from one Speaker but from the entire House. The difference between those two paths will decide whether the 2025 corruption crisis becomes a turning point — or just another entry in the long history of Philippine political scandals.
The Duterte Dimension
Any honest discussion of the 2025 corruption crisis cannot stop at flood-control contracts or obscure budget insertions. It also has to address the unresolved controversies surrounding Vice President Sara Duterte and her allies. Although her office denies wrongdoing, the still-fresh debates over her confidential and intelligence funds in 2023 and 2024 — then totaling more than ₱650 million in a single fiscal year — remain a powerful symbol of how public money can be shielded from scrutiny under the guise of “national security.” Those allocations became a flashpoint in the House and Senate, prompting calls to abolish or strictly limit confidential funds for non-security agencies.
For many ordinary Filipinos, the confidential-fund issue is inseparable from the broader culture of patronage and impunity. It sent a message that while Congress and public works agencies may hide their spending in “hyperlocal” projects, executive officials could do the same under the veil of secrecy. In that sense, the scandals on both ends of government reinforced one another: the legislature normalizing insertions, the executive normalizing opaque lump sums.
The controversy also aggravated the already tense rift between the Marcos and Duterte camps. House leaders loyal to Speaker Martin Romualdez used the confidential-fund hearings to put pressure on Sara Duterte, while Duterte allies accused the Marcos camp of using budget power as a weapon. The antagonism only deepened as investigations into the drug war and online gaming operations gathered steam. While the legal details of those probes are still contested, the fact that international law-enforcement agencies — including Interpol — have become involved signals that the stakes have moved beyond partisan maneuvering into matters of cross-border accountability.
Nor is this purely about confidential funds. The same networks of contractors that flourished under the Duterte administration’s “Build, Build, Build” infrastructure drive — a period marketed as a “golden age” — now appear in audit trails linked to the 2025 scandal. Names such as Discaya, Wawao, and other politically connected contractors reportedly handled projects from 2016 to 2025 spanning flood-control, highways, and bridges. Many of these projects were later flagged for overpricing, duplication, or noncompletion. In effect, the public-works gravy train never really stopped; it merely changed branding, proving that the country’s largest infrastructure initiatives can also become its largest opportunities for rent-seeking.
At the heart of this is a larger question about how Philippine politics handles the legacies of power. The Duterte administration’s “war on drugs” left thousands dead and was allegedly financed in part by taxes and protection fees from Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs). Those claims are now under review by multiple agencies, adding another layer of friction to an already combustible political landscape. As the Marcos administration attempts to project a reformist image, the unfinished business of the drug war and its funding sources keeps the specter of past abuses alive.
In practical terms, this means Sara Duterte cannot escape scrutiny even if the immediate headlines focus on Congress. Her confidential-fund controversy, her proximity to local power brokers, and the investigations into the Duterte-era security apparatus are all part of the same accountability ecosystem. For citizens watching from the outside, it reinforces the perception that “pork” is not only a legislative vice but a systemic one spanning all branches of government.
If the Philippines is serious about breaking the cycle of corruption, then public oversight must cover the executive as rigorously as it covers the legislature. That means real-time disclosure of confidential and intelligence funds, independent auditing of security-related expenditures, and clear criminal liability for officials who divert or misuse them. Otherwise, the country risks swapping one form of unaccountable spending for another — and any reform of Congress will remain incomplete.
A Country on the Edge of Outrage
Civil society is no longer content to be a passive audience to congressional spectacle. Across Metro Manila and provincial capitals, NGOs, civic networks, and church groups have mobilized, demanding that budget insertions, procurement deals, and contractor lists be posted in real time. The planned “Trillion Peso March” on September 21 — timed to coincide with the anniversary of the declaration of Martial Law — signals that the patience of taxpayers is wearing thin. The echoes of the 2013 Million People March, which helped topple the old PDAF system, are unmistakable.
Social media has amplified the pressure as sites like X, Facebook, and TikTok into de facto watchdogs. Viral explainers and “follow the money” infographics circulate widely, making it far harder for lawmakers to quietly bury insertions in obscure budget documents. In a country where trust in mainstream institutions is brittle, this networked outrage is fast becoming the new opposition.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has tried to seize the initiative by creating the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI), chaired by retired Supreme Court Justice Andres Reyes Jr., with former DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson and fraud examiner Rossana Fajardo as members. While the move is welcome, Filipinos have reason to be skeptical. Past commissions — from the Fertilizer Fund scandal to the NBN-ZTE probe — raised expectations but often failed to deliver indictments or systemic reform.
What’s different this time is the regional context. In Nepal (2015–2020), mass anti-corruption protests forced high-level resignations and re-wrote procurement rules for post-earthquake reconstruction. In Indonesia, the 2019 street protests over weakened anti-graft laws galvanized students and civic groups to challenge entrenched patronage networks, leading to new oversight mechanisms in public works contracts. These examples show that sustained, nonviolent pressure can break through cultures of impunity, but also that such movements come with risk: leaders must navigate between lawful protest and the temptation to escalate into confrontation.
Many Filipinos watching these events abroad are drawing their own conclusions: if neighboring countries can challenge entrenched systems, why can’t the Filipino people? The question is no longer whether outrage exists — it clearly does — but whether it can be channeled into a durable reform movement rather than a passing spectacle.
This is the knife’s edge on which the Philippines now stands. If the “Trillion Peso March” becomes merely cathartic, Congress will ride out the storm as it has done before. If it crystallizes into a sustained demand for open budgets, independent auditing, and criminal prosecutions, it could mark the most serious challenge to congressional patronage since the PDAF was struck down. Either way, the coming months will test whether the public’s anger is powerful enough to break a cycle of scandal and reinvention that has survived every reform in the last thirty years.
Why This Matters
The current crisis is not just another corruption story. It is about whether Congress can still be trusted to handle public money without turning it into political capital. The legislature is supposed to wield the “power of the purse” to safeguard taxpayer funds and ensure that spending reflects national priorities. Instead, it has become the arena for manipulation — a structural defect that undermines every national goal from disaster resilience to education reform.
The damage is cumulative and measurable. When billions of pesos earmarked for flood-control or classrooms vanish into thin air, the consequence isn’t abstract — it means deeper floods, delayed school openings, overstretched hospitals, and infrastructure that collapses at the first typhoon. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have repeatedly noted that every peso lost to leakage or graft in Philippine public works produces a ripple effect of lower GDP growth, weaker investor confidence, and higher disaster-recovery costs. Corruption at this scale is therefore not only a moral outrage but also a brake on economic growth, public trust, and climate preparedness.
For this reason, public oversight must be more than a slogan. The government needs to publish project data in real time, enforce independent auditing, and apply strict penalties for contractors and officials involved in irregularities. Budgets must be open enough for citizens, journalists, and watchdog groups to cross-check allocations, contractors, and timelines. This also means empowering the Commission on Audit with more staff and more teeth — automatic referrals to the Ombudsman, permanent bans on corrupt firms, and whistleblower protection for insiders who expose irregularities.
More importantly, voters must link these scandals to political accountability at the ballot box. Without electoral consequences, the incentives for lawmakers to exploit insertions and ghost projects remain stronger than the incentives to govern honestly. Nepal’s post-earthquake reforms and Indonesia’s anti-graft protests both showed that public pressure combined with voting power can shift policy, but only if outrage is sustained long enough to translate into political cost.
And here is the hard truth: if the public treats each scandal as a one-off, Congress will simply adapt and rename the pork barrel yet again. But if citizens demand not just new labels but new rules — including the recovery of stolen assets, the blacklisting of guilty contractors, and the prosecution of complicit officials — then this moment could be remembered as the point when the cycle finally broke.
The 2025 scandal should therefore be treated not as another headline but as a turning point. It is an invitation to rethink how public funds are protected, who benefits from budget decisions, and how ordinary people can reclaim the “power of the purse” from political dynasties. The patience of taxpayers is not infinite; without credible reforms, civic frustration will look for stronger outlets, as it has in neighboring countries.
The question is not whether Filipinos have a right to be angry — they do — but whether that anger can be harnessed to build institutions strong enough to keep public money public. That, ultimately, is the real test of democracy.