THE FOUR-month delay in the passing the 2019 budget has had detrimental effects on our slowly-progressing economy, but what’s worse is that the deadlock could have been averted if the policymaking process was not clouded with partisan politics.
President Duterte signing the national budget only this April has forced government to operate under a reenacted budget from last year’s.
As a result of the delay, fewer projects have been implemented, resulting in fewer employment opportunities, less consumer spending, and a higher incidence of poverty leading to lowered national income.
The delay has also hampered the salary increases of government employees and implementation of projects, such as the priority government infrastructure program, “Build Build Build.”
Infrastructure projects, for instance, should have been underway during the summer season which is the best time for construction projects.
Government agencies have only less than eight months to spend the appropriations, a timeframe cut further due to the election ban on the release of public funds until June 12.
Experts warned that the limited time to spend would most likely repeat the underspending nightmare during the previous administration, and nobody would like to experience that again.
So how quickly can the government spend the money to materialize their projects within 2019? If not, the budget would just be given back to the government, unable to aid in developing our economy.
It has been eight years since the Philippines used a reenacted budget but the political standoffs and squabbles in the legislature, unfortunately, made this possible.
More than its irreversible negative implications to our economy, the budget delay showed one weakness of the principle of checks and balances – deadlock.
Since 2018, Congress has been haggling over pork-barrel insertions, wrestling over where to allocate taxpayers’ money, acting as if, not most of it, would land in their own pockets.
They bickered on the allegations of insertion of “misplaced allocation to favored contractors” and pork-barrel-like funds in the 2019 budget.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson called out the funds inserted in districts of congressmen who are allegedly allied with House Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Arroyo fought back, accusing Lacson of holding the budget for “personal vendetta.”
Regardless if the allegations are true or not, it is appalling how partisan politics unreasonably impeded crafting the national budget.
It is also an unfortunate reality that the whole population does not really have a say on how the national budget would be used.
Because of the process, the budget is most likely crafted for their own partisan agenda.
Thus, although Congress has the power of the purse, the constitutional process for budget approval, with its loopholes and all, is not effective in realizing the aspirations of the State.
Inherent in presidential systems, these gridlocks are not only limited to the budgeting scene but more evidently in lawmaking.
We have seen how politicians made their way towards deadlock situations to stall and prevent a bill or policy from being legislated or enacted.
But the vicious cycle of proposing a policy, getting ad hominem attacks instead of objective criticisms, entering deadlock and vanishing to oblivion.
Instead of focusing on their mandated duties to the people, government processes have become entertainment shows.
This is why reforms on these vital political processes are needed to ensure that delaying tactics and the vicious practice of congressional insertions would not hamper quality public service in the government.
At the end of the day, are all these delays still worth it if the Filipinos bear and suffer the cost of stalled government processes which are supposed to “promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy,” as our preamble would put it?
