Budgetary Theatrics: A Curatorial Frame on Unprogrammed Appropriations, Legislative Capture, and the Theatrics of Fiscal Legacy
Budgetary Theatrics: A Curatorial Frame on Unprogrammed Appropriations, Legislative Capture, and the Theatrics of Fiscal Legacy
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™
April 8, 2026
---
Curatorial Frame
This curatorial frame stages a reading of public finance as if it were an exhibition: a sequence of objects (laws, line graphs, appropriation schedules), a set of actors (executive, legislature, auditors, citizens), and a set of interpretive devices (narrative, irony, anecdote). The aim is not merely to catalog numbers but to render them legible as cultural artifacts—objects that carry intention, accident, and the sediment of political habit. The frame is academic in method, humane in address, esoteric in its occasional theoretical aside, humorous where the absurdity of budget theater invites it, poignant where livelihoods are implicated, erudite in its references to institutional practice, ironic in its insistence that "legacies" can be manufactured by accounting sleights, and critical in its refusal to accept surface narratives. I begin with a premise: budgets are rhetorical acts as much as they are technical instruments. They tell stories about priorities, power, and the plausible limits of accountability.
The object at the center of this exhibition is the phenomenon of Unprogrammed Appropriations (UA)—the fiscal residue that emerges when the General Appropriations Act (GAA) departs from the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted by the Executive. The UA is not merely a line item; it is a trace of negotiation, a fingerprint of legislative preference, and sometimes, a ledger of capture. The years under scrutiny—roughly 2022 through 2026—present a dramatic arc: a fiscal loosening in 2022 that provides "financial elbow room" to a succeeding administration; an astonishing jump in NEP and GAA figures in 2023; a period (2023–2025) in which the GAA appears to “lord” over the NEP; and then a sudden retraction in 2026. This arc invites a curatorial question: what does the materiality of these numbers reveal about institutional balance, political agency, and the ethics of public stewardship?
To stage this question, the frame deploys three cabinets of interpretation.
Cabinet One: The Archive of Numbers. Here we place the NEP documents, the successive GAAs, and the DBM (Department of Budget and Management) tables that record the differences between executive proposals and legislative appropriations. The archive shows a pattern: an expansionary impulse in the GAA—often justified as infrastructure-led growth—does not necessarily translate into macroeconomic expansion. The curatorial note insists on a distinction between nominal expansion (bigger budget lines) and real expansion (measurable growth in GDP, employment, and public welfare). The numbers, when read against macroeconomic indicators, suggest a disjunction: large appropriations that do not redound to broad-based economic benefit. This is not merely a technical observation; it is a moral one. Budgets that swell without producing public value are, in effect, misdirected promises.
Cabinet Two: The Theater of Institutions. Budgets are enacted by actors. The Executive drafts the NEP; Congress amends and enacts the GAA. The curatorial gaze focuses on the period when Congress—principally the 19th—exercised de facto control over funds, and the Executive's NEP became comparatively weak. The frame reads this as a dramaturgical inversion: the legislature, traditionally the deliberative check on the executive, becomes the primary engine of appropriation, and in doing so, assumes a role that blurs separation-of-powers norms. The curatorial voice is ironic here: the "legislative triumph" is staged as a hollow victory if it results in budget capture and the hollowing out of public accountability. Anecdotes—stories of local projects that received funding but never materialized—populate this cabinet, giving human faces to abstract capture.
Cabinet Three: The Ethics of Legacy. Political actors often seek legacies—monuments, highways, named bridges—that outlast electoral cycles. The frame interrogates the claim that a particular administration "left a legacy" through expanded GAA spending. The curatorial verdict is skeptical: if the expansion was engineered through legislative capture, if funds were allocated in ways that favored patronage rather than public goods, and if macroeconomic indicators did not improve, then the "legacy" is at best a simulacrum. It is a legacy of process capture rather than public benefit. The frame thus reframes legacy as an ethical category: a legitimate legacy must be accountable, durable, and demonstrably beneficial.
Interleaved with these cabinets is a methodological sidebar: the curator refuses to treat the NEP–GAA divergence as a mere accounting curiosity. Instead, the divergence is read as a symptom of institutional imbalance. When the GAA consistently departs from the NEP in favor of discretionary or constituency-driven allocations, the result is a budget that reflects the bargaining power of legislators rather than a coherent national strategy. The curator's voice is both erudite and humane: erudite in tracing institutional mechanisms, humane in insisting that the stakes are not abstract but lived—schools that remain unbuilt, health clinics that lack equipment, roads that do not connect markets.
At this point the frame must confront an alternative narrative: that the expansionary GAA was a necessary corrective to underinvestment, that the NEP was prudentially conservative, and that legislative augmentation was a democratic correction. The curator does not dismiss this alternative out of hand. Instead, the curator disconfirms it on its merits and premises. The disconfirmation proceeds in three moves.
First, empirics. If the GAA's expansion were an effective corrective, macroeconomic indicators—investment, employment, output—should show commensurate improvement. The frame points to the absence of such improvement in the relevant years. Second, mechanism. Democratic correction presupposes transparent prioritization and measurable outcomes. The pattern of UA and the opacity of many GAA insertions suggest discretionary allocation rather than transparent prioritization. Third, accountability. A democratic correction is accountable to voters and subject to oversight. The period in question shows weakened executive oversight and a legislature that exercised appropriation power in ways that resisted scrutiny. Taken together, these points disconfirm the alternative narrative: the expansion was not a corrective but a capture.
The curator's tone here is ironic but not cynical. There is room for humor—at the spectacle of budget lines ballooning like stage props—yet the humor is tempered by poignancy. The frame closes with an anecdote: a barangay hall that received a ribbon-cutting but no functioning water pump, a microcosm of the larger misalignment between appropriation and public value. The curator's final injunction is civic: budgets are not theater; they are instruments of collective life. If the public is to reclaim them, it must insist on transparency, institutional balance, and the removal of incumbents who enable capture. The curator does not prescribe partisan remedies; rather, the curator insists on procedural and ethical reforms that restore the budget to its public purpose.
Transcription of provided political passage (verbatim):
> "This effectively destroys the allegations and the false news peddled by some quarters that UA started during PRRD's time, 2016-2022 and you can see that the Duterte administration's NEP and GAA in 2022 gave financial elbow room to the succeeding administration.
>
> After that, look at the amazing jump of NEP and GAA in 2023 and then GAA lorded everything from 2023, 2024, 2025. Then the sudden retraction came 2026. 3 years Congress had control over the funds of the country. And where did it go?
>
> What else does it tell you? The expansionary growth because of infrastructure (GAA) did not redound to the benefit of the economy. In fact the economy did not expand in those years.
>
> What else does it tell you? From 2023-2025, we had a weak Executive (NEP) who cannot control his allies and even his NEP became nothing compared to the greed found in the GAA. What happens? No development. It was designed thievery. So what legacy are we talking about? It's a legacy of budget capture by Congress (19th principally) allowed by the President himself.
>
> To you taxpayers, let us remove the incumbents in Congress who allowed this destruction of the GAA process and let us not allow the Executive to escape further from accountability. We deserve better!"
---
Disconfirmation of the Alternative on Its Merits and Premise (integrated conclusion)
The alternative narrative—that legislative augmentation corrected underinvestment and that the GAA's expansion was democratically legitimate—fails on empirical, procedural, and ethical grounds. Empirically, the expected macroeconomic returns did not materialize. Procedurally, the mechanisms of prioritization and oversight were weakened. Ethically, the pattern resembles capture rather than correction. The curator therefore treats the alternative as a plausible rhetorical defense but not as a convincing explanation of outcomes.
---
Curatorial Narrative Critique
The curatorial narrative critique takes the frame into a closer, more forensic light. It reads the budgetary spectacle as a sequence of scenes, each revealing a different pathology of governance. Scene one: the NEP as a modest, technocratic script—an executive's attempt to choreograph national priorities. Scene two: the GAA as an improvisational chorus—legislators adding flourishes, footnotes, and entire set pieces. Scene three: the UA as the backstage clutter—unprogrammed, unaccounted for, and often unexamined.
The critique begins with method. Curatorship demands both distance and intimacy: distance to see patterns, intimacy to hear the anecdotal whispers. The narrative listens for dissonance. Where the NEP and GAA diverge, the narrative asks: who benefits? The answer is rarely the diffuse public. Instead, benefits accrue to localized projects, constituency-driven allocations, and sometimes to contractors and intermediaries whose relationships with legislators are opaque. The narrative is not conspiratorial; it is structural. It traces incentives: legislators rewarded for delivering visible projects to constituencies; executives constrained by political coalitions; auditors hampered by limited investigative bandwidth.
A central claim of the critique is that scale without coherence is waste. The GAA's expansion—if not tethered to a coherent national strategy and measurable outcomes—becomes an instrument of distribution rather than development. Infrastructure spending, for instance, is often invoked as a panacea. But infrastructure is not an automatic engine of growth; it requires complementary investments (maintenance, institutional capacity, market linkages) and time. The narrative points to cases where roads were built without connecting markets, or where bridges were inaugurated but lacked access roads. These are not mere bureaucratic failures; they are the predictable outcomes of appropriation logic that privileges ribbon-cutting over systems thinking.
The critique also interrogates the rhetoric of "legacy." Political actors seek to be remembered; budgets are a convenient medium for memorialization. But the narrative insists that a legitimate legacy must be demonstrable: improved service delivery, sustained economic gains, and strengthened institutions. A legacy of captured budgets—where appropriations serve patronage networks—cannot be celebrated as public achievement. The narrative's tone is ironic: the more ostentatious the monument, the more likely it masks institutional erosion.
Another strand of the critique concerns accountability. The narrative laments the weakening of executive oversight and the ascendancy of legislative appropriation power. This inversion creates perverse incentives: executives may tolerate legislative capture to secure political support; legislators have exploit appropriation power to consolidate local influence. The result is a governance equilibrium that privileges short-term political gain over long-term public value. The narrative calls for institutional recalibration: clearer rules on UA, strengthened audit and oversight mechanisms, and procedural reforms that make appropriation decisions transparent and evidence-based.
Yet the critique is not merely denunciatory. It offers a civic imagination. If budgets are exhibitions, then the public must be invited into the gallery. Transparency is the first step: accessible NEP and GAA documents, clear explanations of deviations, and public dashboards that link appropriations to outcomes. Second, procedural reforms: stricter rules on unprogrammed appropriations, mandatory impact assessments for large projects, and enhanced audit follow-through. Third, political accountability: electoral consequences for those who enable capture, and institutional incentives for cross-branch cooperation that prioritize public value.
The narrative closes with a human vignette: a teacher in a provincial school who received a promise of a new classroom funded through a GAA insertion, only to find the project stalled for years. The teacher's frustration is the moral center of the critique. Budgets are not abstract; they are promises to people. When those promises are diverted into the machinery of capture, the moral contract between state and citizen frays.
---
Summative Afterword
Budgets are both instruments and narratives. The NEP–GAA divergence examined here reveals more than accounting differences; it reveals institutional dynamics, incentives, and ethical choices. The period of 2022-2026, with its dramatic GAA expansions and subsequent retraction, reads as a cautionary tale about legislative capture, weakened executive oversight, and the hollowing out of legacy claims. The remedy is not merely technical but civic: transparency, procedural reform, and electoral accountability. Citizens deserve budgets that translate into durable public value, not theatrical appropriations that serve private ends. The curatorial task is to make these dynamics visible, to translate numbers into stories, and to insist that public finance be judged by its capacity to improve lives.
---
Footnotes
1. Department of Budget and Management (DBM), National Expenditure Program and General Appropriations Act datasets, 2022–2026.
2. Supreme Court oral arguments and case dockets related to GAA disputes, April 7, 2026.
3. Comparative macroeconomic indicators for 2022-2025 (GDP growth, investment, employment) as reported by national statistical agencies.
4. Investigative reporting on constituency insertions and project implementation in 2023-2025.
5. Scholarly literature on budgetary institutions, legislative appropriation power, and capture dynamics.
---
Selected Sources and References
Bibliography
- Department of Budget and Management. National Expenditure Program 2022–2026. Manila: DBM.
- Department of Budget and Management. General Appropriations Act 2022; General Appropriations Act 2023; General Appropriations Act 2024; General Appropriations Act 2025; General Appropriations Act 2026. Manila: DBM.
- Supreme Court of the Philippines. Oral Arguments, GR No. 271059; GR No. 271347; GR No. E-02472; GR No. E-04036, April 7, 2026.
- Philippine Statistics Authority. National Accounts and Labor Statistics, 2022–2025. Manila: PSA.
- [Investigative Reporter]. "Constituency Insertions and Implementation Gaps, 2023-2025." Investigative Series, [News Outlet], 2025–2026.
- Schick, Allen. The Federal Budget: Politics, Policy, Process. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007.
- Olson, Mancur. The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
---
Notes on Use and Citation
- The footnote markers in the essay correspond to the numbered items in the Footnotes section above.
- The bibliography entries are provided in Chicago Notes and Bibliography style for the principal documentary and scholarly sources that inform the curatorial frame and critique.
- Where specific datasets or news articles are cited in the footnotes, readers should consult the DBM and PSA official publications and the Supreme Court docket for primary documents.
*** credit to the owners of the photo & articles otherwise cited
---
*** credit to the owners of the photo & articles otherwise cited
If you like my any of my concept research, writing explorations, art works and/or simple writings please support me by sending me a coffee treat at my paypal amielgeraldroldan.paypal.me or GXI 09053027965. Much appreciate and thank you in advance.
Just featured at https://www.pressenza.com/2026/01/the-asian-cultural-council-global-alumni-network-amiel-gerald-a-roldan/
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ curatorial writing practice exemplifies this path: transforming grief into infrastructure, evidence into agency, and memory into resistance. As the Philippines enters a new economic decade, such work is not peripheral—it is foundational.
I'm trying to complement my writings with helpful inputs and prompts. Bear with me as I am treating this blog as repositories and drafts.
Please comment and tag if you like my compilations visit www.amielroldan.blogspot.com or www.amielroldan.wordpress.com
and comments at
amiel_roldan@outlook.com
amielgeraldroldan@gmail.com
A multidisciplinary Filipino artist, poet, researcher, and cultural worker whose practice spans painting, printmaking, photography, installation, and writing. He is deeply rooted in cultural memory, postcolonial critique, and in bridging creative practice with scholarly infrastructure—building counter-archives, annotating speculative poetry like Southeast Asian manuscripts, and fostering regional solidarity through ethical art collaboration.
Recent show at ILOMOCA
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/16qUTDdEMD
https://www.linkedin.com/safety/go?messageThreadUrn=urn%3Ali%3AmessageThreadUrn%3A&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pressenza.com%2F2025%2F05%2Fcultural-workers-not-creative-ilomoca-may-16-2025%2F&trk=flagship-messaging-android
https://alumni.asianculturalcouncil.org/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAPlR6NjbGNrA-VG_2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHoy6hXUptbaQi5LdFAHcNWqhwblxYv_wRDZyf06-O7Yjv73hEGOOlphX0cPZ_aem_sK6989WBcpBEFLsQqr0kdg
Amiel Gerald A. Roldan™ started Independent Curatorial Manila™ as a nonprofit philanthropy while working for institutions simultaneously early on.
The Independent Curatorial Manila™ or ICM™ is a curatorial services and guide for emerging artists in the Philippines. It is an independent/voluntary services entity and aims to remain so. Selection is through proposal and a prerogative temporarily. Contact above for inquiries.
Create connection,
Value conversation.
For you
Who we are
Meet the team
ICM culture
How to apply
Stories
Contact us
Language
Manage your cookie preferences
Privacy & Cookie Policies
Terms of use
Global code of conduct & ethics
All rights reserved Amiel Gerald Roldan® 2026
Furthermore, the commentary reflects my personal interpretation of publicly available data and is offered as fair comment on matters of public interest. It does not allege criminal liability or wrongdoing by any individual.
Comments