The war on corruption
The corruption crisis, which began as the flood control scandal, around July, was the headline issue of 2025. The Makati Business Club (MBC) remained focused on the broader issues of national development, but the corruption crisis was not a distraction from this goal. We, and others in the private sector, see the corruption crisis as an opportunity to reform governance and fight traditional patronage politics which is closely related to political dynasties.
Evolving patronage politics to a more merit- and performance-based model is crucial, because patronage politics is simply a dysfunctional way to run a country. Public funds, which should be spent for economic development, including agricultural development, poverty eradication, social welfare programs, education, and relevant infrastructure are plundered, diverted, or leveraged by political actors (including dynasties), to ensure their reelection, as well as enrich themselves.
This has traditionally been done by “hijacking” the national budget. In the past, the “pork barrel” system was used, wherein representatives in Congress and the Senate, as well as local government officials, would get large, lump sum allocations for usually vague programs, to be disbursed on a discretionary basis.
This was declared illegal by the Supreme Court in 2013, but the practice has continued, under other names and workarounds. Officials have inserted programs and projects designed to be plundered, such as the notorious overpriced or even “ghost” flood control projects.
Some of these are inserted as “unprogrammed” funds, meaning they can be spent if the government achieves revenue collections in excess of targets, creates new revenue sources, or is able to get loans (primarily from multilateral agencies) or underspends or realizes savings on regular appropriations.
Much has been said about how corruption affects the economy. It’s difficult to measure. Corruption unfortunately does not reflect in the gross domestic product. All government spending is added to GDP, whether the money went into actual completed projects, or into the pockets of contractors, Congress representatives, governors, mayors, or other government officials.
When the corruption crisis exploded, the MBC said that since corruption is systemic, we need to fight it systematically. This meant a long-term and difficult struggle to reform the system. No instant gratification, unfortunately.
Many civil society and private sector groups, i.e., the middle classes, remain focused on demanding that the guilty be punished, in particular that “big fish” should be arrested and convicted, and they want it now. They say, with some justification, that if we let these criminals get away with it, they will do it again—and they have. But the sad reality is, due process takes time. No one is going to be convicted this year.
Meanwhile, the mass voter base has demonstrated that they care less about corruption than about personality, having reelected several different politicians who have previously been convicted or accused of plunder.
This is one of the fundamental quandaries of democracy, faced by many societies, even some developed ones.
The MBC, while it agrees that those guilty should be punished, has focused its efforts to prevent future corruption, in particular, a hijacking of the 2026 national budget. Yes, the same officials are trying again.
As part of the People’s Budget Coalition, the MBC has joined the Catholic Church, academe, other business and civil society groups, and several former government officials, in auditing and questioning the 2026 budget. We have allied and collaborated with key members, mostly in the progressive blocs of the Senate and House of Representatives, to intervene in the formulation of the budget, especially by blocking suspicious insertions and unprogrammed funds.
We continue to hope that our efforts in exposing these conspiracies to defraud the public will result in a cleaner and better 2026 budget, more focused on development. No budget will be perfect, but we believe we can get one significantly better than those of the last decade or so, which had hundreds of billions of pesos in corruption built in to them from the start.
Once we have an acceptable budget, we will need to continue our work on development initiatives. Better governance remains one of those important initiatives. Convincing voters to elect officials with more integrity, and especially, to reject dysfunctional and exploitative political dynasties, is a different but allied task that will take potentially decades. That war must be fought, and we will fight it.
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Apa Ongpin is the executive director of Makati Business Club.
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Business Matters is a project of Makati Business Club (makatibusinessclub@mbc.com.ph).
