KARAPATAN: 2026 national budget remains fuel for corruption, rights violations
KARAPATAN Public Information
PRESS RELEASE
06 January 2026
Reference: Cristina Palabay, KARAPATAN secretary general, 09173162831
KARAPATAN Public Information Desk, 09189790580
KARAPATAN: 2026 national budget remains fuel for corruption, rights violations
Human rights alliance KARAPATAN warned of increased violations of people’s rights particularly in rural communities, with the newly enacted 2026 national budget, which it denounced as a “massive pork barrel scheme and a continuing source of corruption, rights violations, and fascism.”
“The retention of funding for bodies such as the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), the expansion of discretionary funds, and the preservation of pork barrel mechanisms demonstrate that this budget offers no break from the system that sustains corruption and fascist rule,” said KARAPATAN Secretary General Cristina Palabay.
KARAPATAN expressed grave concern over the further expansion of Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIF). Confidential funds increased from ₱4.37 billion to ₱5.25 billion, while intelligence funds rose from ₱6.4 billion to ₱6.63 billion — bringing the total to more than ₱11 billion despite persistent issues of lack of transparency and accountability. Of this amount, ₱4.6 billion is concentrated in the Office of the President.
“With CIFs largely shielded from public scrutiny, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has essentially been granted ₱4.6 billion as a ready pool for corruption,” Palabay said, citing the repeated controversies surrounding the use of such funds.
The 2026 budget also allocates a ₱60-billion lump sum for the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Modernization Program. This grants the Department of National Defense broad authority to enter into contracts and loan agreements for military hardware without prior congressional approval or meaningful scrutiny, further turning the program into a lucrative source of corruption.
KARAPATAN likewise condemned the retention of funds for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), including ₱8.08 billion for the so-called Barangay Development Program—an amount four times higher than last year’s allocation. This “Generals’ Pork” is funneled to so-called “cleared” barangays upon the imprimatur of the NTF-ELCAC.
“This is payoffs for local government officials that have gone all-out with red-tagging, implemented forced or fake surrenders, suppressed visible dissent, and stifled critical discourse in line with the NTF-ELCAC’s warped notion of peace and justice,” Palabay said.
Following the NTF-ELCAC’s framework, limited ayuda and scattered local infrastructure projects are dangled in place of genuine agrarian reform and other requisites of social justice.
“This ₱8.08 billion is deliberately allotted to ignore the deep-seated roots of people’s unrest, thereby perpetuating injustice and militarization,” Palabay added.
Under current conditions, millions of pesos are funneled into areas the military labels as “hotbeds,” where communities endure heavy troop deployment, surveillance, threats, and terror-tagging, alongside piecemeal projects that fail to address poverty and landlessness.
KARAPATAN also criticized the supposed veto of ₱92.5 billion in unprogrammed appropriations as merely cosmetic. “This does not alter the fundamentally anti-people character of the budget, which keeps pork barrel funds intact,” Palabay said.
The group urged continued public vigilance over so-called “allocables” in agencies such as the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), which allow legislators to identify infrastructure projects in their districts. “Kickbacks, overpricing, substandard construction, and ghost projects will not simply disappear under a system that continues to tolerate and institutionalize these practices,” Palabay warned.
Overall, KARAPATAN said the 2026 national budget prioritizes the interests of political elites and powerful institutions while providing inadequate support to workers, farmers, fisherfolk, students, teachers, women, and the youth.
“The 2026 budget serves the political survival of the Marcos administration rather than the rights and welfare of the Filipino people. It enables systemic corruption, reinforces political control, and deepens inequality,” said Palabay.
KARAPATAN roundly repudiates the anti-people 2026 national budget and joins the public in demanding that funds earmarked for corruption and fascism be rechanneled to urgently needed social services. “The Filipino people deserve a national budget that genuinely prioritizes human rights, genuine land reform, national industrialization, free and quality public services, decent jobs with living wages, and sustainable social development—not pork barrel allocations, patronage politics, and corruption,” Palabay ended.
PUBLIC INFORMATION DESK
publi...@karapatan.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
KARAPATAN is an alliance of human rights organizations and programs, human rights desks and committees of people’s organizations, and individual advocates committed to the defense and promotion of people’s rights and civil liberties. It monitors and documents cases of human rights violations, assists and defends victims and conducts education, training and campaign.