QUEZON CITY (MindaNews / 23 December) — Once again, the bicameral conference committee has produced a national budget that leaves Mindanao at the margins. The 2026 General Appropriations Act repeats a familiar pattern: selective increases alongside deep structural inequities. While there are welcome improvements in certain sectors, the overall design of the budget continues to disadvantage Mindanao.
This is not an accident of arithmetic. It is the predictable outcome of a budget process still captured by patronage politics and reinforced by constitutionally suspect mechanisms such as unprogrammed appropriations and discretionary social assistance funds.
To be fair, there are gains that deserve recognition.
The increase in agriculture credit is a meaningful development, and credit is due to Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr., the Secretary of Agriculture, working closely with Francis Pangilinan, the Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food. Under their leadership, agriculture funding and credit support have reached their highest levels on record, reflecting delivery on campaign commitments to strengthen food security and support farmers and fisherfolk.
For Mindanao, where agriculture and fisheries remain central to livelihoods, this increase matters.
Similarly, education saw improvements that should not be dismissed. Additional allocations reflect the leadership of Juan Edgardo Angara, the Secretary of Education, together with Bam Aquino, the Chair of the Senate Committee on Education. The 2026 budget allocates the largest education budget in Philippine history, underscoring seriousness in honoring commitments to access, equity, and quality.
For Mindanao’s underserved schools, these gains are real and significant.
At this point, it is also important to note why funding for Project NOAH is a step in the right direction, especially for Mindanao.
Mindanao is among the most disaster-exposed regions of the country, facing increasingly severe floods, landslides, storm surges, and droughts. Project NOAH provides science-based hazard mapping, early warning systems, and localized risk assessments that allow local governments and communities to prepare before disaster strikes. Unlike discretionary relief and post-disaster cash assistance, Project NOAH reduces loss of life and property by investing upstream in prevention, planning, and informed decision-making.
For Mindanao, where geography, climate, and under-resourced local governments intersect, this kind of anticipatory governance saves lives and public funds and strengthens local autonomy.
But these positive developments exist within a framework that still treats equity as optional rather than foundational.
Discretion instead of rights
The most troubling features of the 2026 budget lie in its heavy reliance on discretionary mechanisms.
Unprogrammed appropriations authorize spending without assured revenues and leave actual release to executive discretion. This reverses the constitutional logic of budgeting, which requires specificity, transparency, and accountability. Instead of Congress clearly deciding priorities, real power shifts to those who control release.
Alongside this is the continued expansion of discretionary social assistance programs under the Department of Social Welfare and Development, particularly the Assistance to Individuals in Crisis Situation (AICS) and the Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients (MAIFIP). Both address real and urgent needs.
In Mindanao, where poverty remains high, hospitals are underfunded, and out-of-pocket medical expenses are crushing, such assistance can be lifesaving.
The problem is not their existence. It is how they operate within a patronage-driven system.
AICS and MAIFIP function largely through discretion. Access is often mediated by referrals, endorsements, or direct political intervention rather than by clear, automatic entitlements. Families are compelled to seek guarantee letters to pay hospital bills or secure emergency assistance. What should be institutional support becomes personalized relief.
This has grave consequences for Mindanao. Instead of investing adequately in provincial hospitals, primary care, health workers, and PhilHealth coverage, the state relies on after-the-fact assistance. Illness triggers appeals rather than assured care. Poverty is managed through queues rather than addressed through structural investment. Citizens are treated as petitioners, not rights holders.
From a constitutional standpoint, AICS and MAIFIP replicate the defects of unprogrammed appropriations. Funds exist, but access is uncertain. Criteria are flexible, but accountability is weak. Releases are visible, but outcomes are opaque. This blurs the line between social protection and political accommodation.
Dependency as governance
Together, unprogrammed appropriations, AICS, and MAIFIP normalize governance by discretion. One controls development projects. The others control survival and health. For Mindanao, the effect is cumulative and corrosive
Nowhere is the damage clearer than in the culture of guarantee letters. When funds are discretionary, Mindanawons are forced into dependence on politicians to access basic services. A hospital patient needs a letter to reduce a bill. A local government waits for a letter to activate a project. A disaster-hit community waits for a letter to release aid.
This hollows out citizenship. Public services are transformed into personal favors. Gratitude replaces accountability. Silence becomes the price of survival. In a region already burdened by poverty, distance, and the legacies of conflict, this system entrenches inequality and political control.
Even the record-high budgets for agriculture and education cannot fully counteract this dynamic when other core needs remain subject to discretion rather than rights.
A better path for Mindanao
There is a better path. A needs-based, climate-informed, and peace-sensitive budget would rely on transparent criteria such as poverty incidence, disaster risk, service gaps, and development backlogs. Emergency and medical assistance should be tightly defined, rule-based, and genuinely residual. They should bridge gaps, not replace investment in public hospitals, universal health care, education, agriculture, and peacebuilding.
This also requires leadership from Malacañang. The Office of the Executive Secretary plays a central role in enforcing discipline, transparency, and constitutional fidelity in budget execution. It is to be hoped that Ralph Recto has drawn hard lessons from the PhilHealth debacle and now recognizes the dangers of discretion without accountability.
The presence of experienced and dependable deputies, such as Senior Deputy Executive Secretary Maria Luwalhati Dorotan-Tiuseco, Deputy Executive Secretary Danielle Marie Rieza Cuyugan, and Deputy Executive Secretary for Legal Affairs Jesse Hermogenes among others, provides the institutional capacity to steer the Executive toward rule-based governance, if fully used.
Finally, this is a call to Mindanao’s own political leaders. Governors, mayors, legislators, and party leaders must develop and defend a common regional vision that puts Mindanao’s collective interests above factional advantage. They should coordinate, speak with one voice during the budget process, and insist on equity as a constitutional demand rather than a favor to be bargained for.
In doing so, they should not emulate Rodrigo Duterte, who spoke the language of Mindanao and the regions but presided over one of the most Manila-centric administrations in recent memory.
Mindanao does not ask for favors. It asks for fairness.
The 2026 bicam-approved budget, despite record-high investments in agriculture and education, still falls short because it remains captive to patronage politics. Until that system is dismantled—and until Mindanao’s leaders unite around a shared, principled vision—the island will continue to be short-changed not only in pesos, but in dignity, rights, and full citizenship.
[MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Dean Antonio Gabriel La Viña is Associate Director of Manila Observatory where he heads the Klima Center. He is also a professor of law, philosophy, politics and governance in several universities. He has been a human rights lawyer for 35 years and a member of the Free Legal Assistance Group. He is currently the managing partner of La Viña Zarate and Associates, a development and social change progressive law firm that provides legal assistance to the youth student sector, Lumad and other Indigenous Peoples, desaparecidos and their families, political detainees, communities affected by climate and environmental justice, etc.
Dean Tony is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and Chair of the Jurisprudence and Legal Philosophy Department of the Philippine Judicial Academy. He is founding president of the Movement Against Disinformation and the founding chairs of the Mindanao Climate Justice Resource Facility and the Mindanao Center for Scholarships, Sports, and Spirituality (MCS³)]
0 Comments