When populists take power, the people become fodder for self-serving ambition, and our goals for development and human rights are, at best, afterthoughts. At worst, they’re trampled on for being inconvenient obstacles to personal wealth and power.
The spectacle of political theater and intentional delay of the vice-president’s impeachment trial in the Senate confirms institutional impunity at the highest levels of government. This is a dark omen for the Philippines and Filipinos – it signals that a public official can brazenly spend hundreds of millions in public funds with no regard for the social and economic services these resources were meant to support.
The spectacle is sensational but, still, only a fragment of the problem. The collective loss from misused public funds across every complicit politician from the lowest barangay level through Congress to Malacañang and the presidency runs into the hundreds of billions of pesos – these are stolen opportunities, stalled progress, and a deepening betrayal of public trust.
The country doesn’t have any headroom. Poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment, have gotten worse under the Marcos Jr administration. It is falling behind or even regressing in the majority of its own targets for the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).
As of February 2025, halfway to the 2023 deadline, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reports that the country is off-track in 79% of its SDG targets – progress is lagging in 52% and actually regressing in 27% of targets. Amid so much hype about economic growth and progress, the country is on-track in just 21% of its commitments.
Poverty reduction according to official poverty lines is off-track, while the Social Weather Stations (SWS) actually reports poverty increasing to 55% or 15.5 million families at the start of April – with the slight decline to 50% or 14.1 million families at the end of April plausibly due to massive vote-buying as the elections neared. Progress is lagging in access to basic services, secure land rights and others – while casualties from natural disasters are increasing.
Food security and malnutrition are regressing. This is consistent with SWS reports that hunger has more than doubled since the start of the Marcos Jr administration to 27.2% or 7.5 million families by March 2025.
Progress is reported as off-track in employment and decent work, child and forced labor, and labor rights with the backdrop of underdevelopment. This is not surprising – the most important sectors for job creation and economic progress are at their smallest shares of the economy in at least 75 years. Agriculture and manufacturing contracted from 11.3% and 19.2%, respectively, in 2015 to 17.6% and 8% in 2024 which prevents the economy from generating sustainable employment.
Yet a few prosper amidst underdevelopment for the many. Since 2015, the wealth of the three richest Filipinos – Enrique Razon, Manuel Villar, and Ramon Ang – grew 563% to reach Php1.8 trillion today. Annual profits of the Top 1000 corporations are 78% higher at Php2 trillion in 2023. The richest 2% or 500,000 families today have as much wealth as the poorest 80% or 22 million families combined.
Elite personal wealth is closely tied to political power. The three richest tycoons are behind the country’s three consistently largest political parties, accounting for 38% of senators and 36% of representatives in Congress, and 38% of governors. The recently-concluded midterm elections reinforced this with traditional politicians, political dynasties, and big business-biased officials narrowing development prospects even more. They are the reason economic policy is systematically biased for big business profits, and why governance structures are designed to shield corrupt politicians.
Government can take action but is doing the opposite. Its so-called fiscal consolidation means austerity for health, education, housing and social security, agriculture, and environmental protection. Meanwhile, infrastructure programs benefiting big business and foreign investors keep getting justified as essential, and pork barrel bloating is just business-as-usual. Amid tax cuts on corporations, investment incomes and the rich, the poor and middle class are burdened with new consumption taxes.
Hype about the country’s economic progress is relentless, but even in global terms the country is left behind and in the bottom-third by income per capita. There is much to be done.
The Marcos Jr administration is trapped in the same discredited neoliberal paradigm of past governments – obsessed with attracting foreign investments and favoring big business instead of spending on people’s welfare and strengthening the economy from within. Adopting a genuinely people-biased transformative economic agenda can eliminate poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment, and accelerate sustainable development to ensure no Filipino is left behind. ###
