Politics of Visibility: Whose hand holds the purse?

The power of the purse is no stranger to succumbing to the impulses and insatiability of its entrusted wielder—Congress. Be that as it may, the executive still holds the baton: it decides where the orchestration starts and stops. Akin to a war of attrition under complete information, an early surrender becomes a calculated concession when one side knows that further resistance will exhaust its resources without improving its position.

Congress, prone to internal fracture, is only as resilient as a dike’s weakest section—an infiltration emboldens the executive to exert pressure and erode the institution’s resistance. What was designed as a coequal safeguard cedes its sole power of the purse to the very executive it was meant to check.

Again, Congress is no stranger to its own unraveling: bold when claiming authority, timid when exercising it, and silent when forfeiting it. House members have repeatedly gravitated toward the sitting president’s party in pursuit of access to resources. The dilemma echoes the debate in which accommodation was defended as a means of protecting the population. While claiming they “serve the people,” they mask the fact that securing benefits for a constituency can coexist with securing electoral survival and tightening a dynasty’s grip on power. In this quid pro quo, the bargain is dressed as necessity, deepening a legislator’s debt to the executive—a debt that comes due whenever the executive chooses to collect.

Scrutinizing the proposed 2027 budget would reveal billions of pesos allocated for “ayuda.” At a glance, these billions promise relief to constituents, while leaving legislators’ dependence on executive access out of view. Ayuda offers relief that can be immediately felt, while establishing the conditions for stable employment and lasting economic security requires sustained work. Where political memory is short, another payout whitewashes the image of public service without inviting a reckoning with the record behind it. Where executive backing sustains repeated payouts, the administration gains leverage over a legislator seeking to remain the familiar helping hand. In return, that hand is browbeaten into obeying the executive’s whistle.

Political currency has no fixed exchange rate; another payout does not specify how many votes will follow. Short political memory offers an opportunity to cultivate support, not a receipt proving that support has been secured. Constituents can accept assistance while judging its distributor by other considerations, including demands the payout leaves unanswered. Their agency, however, does not give them equal market power over access to relief. Where competing representatives depend on executive resources, the administration can demand legislative cooperation without securing constituents’ allegiance. Representatives must still decide what they are prepared to accept in the name of serving their constituents. For what enables them to serve today can also determine whose demands they must obey thereafter.

What is offered, then, is the promise of public service, akin to a succulent apple that delights the palate yet remains poisonous to the core. The pleasure of the first bite may be fleeting, but must those who never tasted the apple inherit a tree forsaken by the very hands entrusted with its care? Must a principle promise something in return before those entrusted with its preservation consider it worthy of their fidelity? If upholding it demands sacrifices whose rewards may never be reaped in this lifetime, let those sacrifices nourish generations yet to come. Better an apple left untouched than a tree left barren for generations that have yet to draw sustenance from its fruit.

Troylan John Calvario,

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