September 22, 2025
There is no polite way to say this: the Philippine government is bleeding its people dry. What we are witnessing is not accidental mismanagement, nor mere incompetence. It is the deliberate weaponization of corruption. It is greed that has been institutionalized, codified into budgets, and paraded as “development.” And while the nation drowns in debt, poverty, and disaster, its leaders congratulate themselves over trillion-peso budgets that enrich a few while leaving millions to suffer.
The Ateneo School of Government (ASOG) recently released a blistering statement, exposing the grotesque scale of corruption that has seeped into every pore of governance. Their analysis should shake us to the core. It reveals a government that prioritizes ghost projects over classrooms, patronage over social protection, and plunder over progress. The numbers they present are not just statistics—they are indictments.
The Flood of Lies
Take the so-called “Flood-gate scandal.” In 2015, the budget for flood control projects stood at ₱42 billion. By 2025, it exploded to ₱254 billion. That’s more than the budgets of the Department of Health, the Department of Transportation, or the Department of Agriculture.
Yet, despite these astronomical sums, floods remain unabated, communities still sink under typhoons, and citizens still die in preventable disasters. Where did the money go? Into ghost projects. Into the pockets of colluding contractors and government officials. Into a black hole of greed.
Meanwhile, education—supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution as the top budgetary priority—is starved. The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) now enjoys a trillion-peso budget, surpassing even education. Children remain packed into dilapidated classrooms, 70% of which are in poor condition, while steel, cement, and kickbacks flow like rivers.
A Rural Nation Left to Rot
The scandal is not confined to DPWH. It is a pattern.
In 2025 alone, the Department of Agriculture lost ₱22.4 billion. The National Irrigation Authority lost ₱23.2 billion. The Department of Labor lost ₱18 billion. These are lifeline agencies for farmers, fisherfolk, and workers—the backbone of our nation.
Where did that money go? To DPWH. To pork-laden local funds. To projects designed not for national development but for maximum corruption. Farmers beg for irrigation. Workers demand jobs. Communities cry for better transport. Instead, they get multi-purpose halls and token footbridges designed to siphon funds, not solve problems.
This bias for urban-centric, graft-prone projects exposes the government’s contempt for the countryside. It is as if the nation’s rural poor are meant to be kept poor—forever dependent, forever voiceless.
Debt Without Development
Worse still, this corruption is not even funded by growth. It is funded by debt. Forty percent of the 2025 budget is borrowed money. Our national debt now stands at ₱16.7 trillion, up from ₱12.7 trillion just three years ago.
Debt servicing alone cost ₱1.6 trillion in 2023, grew 26% in 2024, and continues to climb. Interest payments are consuming the nation’s future. Every peso stolen today is borrowed against tomorrow’s generations, shackling children to obligations for projects that never existed.
Poverty as Patronage
Even social services have not been spared. The 4Ps—the most effective, rules-based poverty reduction program we have—was slashed by ₱50 billion. PhilHealth lost ₱74.4 billion in subsidies, effectively gutted.
In their place? Programs like AKAP, AICS, MAIFID, and TUPAD, worth ₱130 billion in 2025. These are not transparent, not targeted, and not rules-based. They are discretionary cash giveaways that politicians can weaponize as political currency. Poverty is no longer addressed as a right to dignity. It is exploited as a system of utang na loob, ensuring political loyalty through crumbs.
This is not social protection. This is feudalism in modern form.
The Complicity of Power
The rot reaches the top. The House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Office of the President all benefited from budget diversions in 2025—₱17.3 billion, ₱1 billion, and ₱5 billion, respectively.
Budgets for these institutions have ballooned astronomically since 2016. The President’s office alone expanded its budget by 461%. The House’s nearly quadrupled. The Senate’s tripled. Much of this shielded as “confidential funds,” immune to scrutiny.
And where is the Commission on Audit in all this? Where are the checks and balances? Silent. Complicit. Broken.
A Government That Kills Slowly
This is what happens when greed becomes governance. Classrooms rot. Hospitals collapse. Farmers starve. Workers languish. Families drown in floods. All the while, the ruling class fattens itself on public money, patting itself on the back for “infrastructure development” while ordinary Filipinos die by a thousand cuts.
It is no exaggeration to say: this government is slowly killing its people. Not with bullets, but with budgets. Not with violence, but with voracious greed.
What Must Be Done
We, the people, must refuse to be accomplices in our own destruction. We must demand:
- Real legislative hearings, not circuses in aid of reelection.
- Full disclosure of bicameral reports and confidential funds.
- Accountability from DPWH, DBM, DILG, and COA, which have enabled this plunder.
- Prosecution of top officials who presided over this budgetary carnage.
If this administration claims to be serious about corruption, let it prove so—not by scapegoating low-level bureaucrats, but by holding its own leaders accountable. Until then, every speech on “good governance” is nothing but hypocrisy.
The Final Word
Greed at this scale is not a lapse. It is not an accident. It is policy. And unless the people themselves say no, unless we demand better, it will continue to be the silent killer of this nation.
The Philippines is not poor. It is being robbed. And the longer we allow greed to masquerade as governance, the faster we march toward our slow collective death.
The question now is simple: how much longer will the people endure being murdered by their own government—one budget at a time?
Data from Ateneo School of Governance