My year-end essay for 2025

Over at Facebook at around this time, people would again be posting essays looking back at the passing year.

- TONYO CRUZ

This is my contribution.There’s something missing in the run up to the Christmas and New Year this soon-to-end 2025.

As more revelations unfold and public outrage boils over the brazen corruption of flood control funds, public officials and generally the upper class have practically stopped posting photos or videos of their normally glitzy, profligate Christmas parties. They know they cannot possibly do so without serious repercussions.

All public officials and their relatives and partners in the private sector are in the defensive as we say goodbye to 2025 and usher in 2026. The officials who claimed P500 is enough for a decent noche buena for a family are quiet too.

Congress is actually still in session this week, as they try their best (or worst) to approve a budget many of us are looking at with a “suyod.” The people are looking for pork, whether “allocables,” “unprogrammed funds,” or “confidential funds.” The President too cannot afford to go on a Christmas break until both houses of Congress ratify and transmit the budget for his signature. (I’m writing this ahead of time, so I don’t know if lawmakers manage to finish the budget by the 28th.)

The last time we saw government under this intense pressure was around 2013 and 2014, when we stood and rallied against congressional and presidential pork until the Supreme Court struck them down.