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Elections allow citizens to choose duty-bearers who can represent their needs and interests. The electoral process is one of the ways citizens hold government officials accountable for the power and responsibility that are given to them. Decisions made by the elected have long-term implications for the succeeding years, and whoever wins in 2025 will determine the direction the country will take, especially for health, education, and transparency, participation and accountability (TPA).
Government Watch (G-Watch), in its decades-long experience, has been at the forefront of ensuring that citizens are capacitated to retain the integrity of electoral spaces as representative of democratic principles. This has been an ongoing effort jointly with capacitating citizens to check service delivery such as in the public health and education sector. Both of these sectors in the Philippines face persisting issues with ties to inefficiency and corruption, as evidenced by G-Watch’s monitoring activities. See here and here for latest reports.
In 2024, this became more apparent with the 2025 budget deliberations. The health sector, particularly PhilHealth, has attained zero subsidies for next year. DepEd faces a host of investigations about its hasty distribution of confidential funds, along with a Php10 billion budget cut from its computerization program. As these issues began to incessantly surface during the last half of 2024, legislators have utilized a more punitive approach by slashing their budgets, rather than placing processes that enable citizens to partake in accountability.
The national budget determines and reflects the sentiment of the administration in its attempt to resolve national issues, but whether it would be able to do so has been questioned by experts and civil society groups. Many have described the 2025 budget as the “worst” and “most corrupt” in recent Philippine history. As early as the start of 2025, experts expect an increase in medical and healthcare costs by 18.3%. Without reforms in the education procurement process, traditional and digital learning resources will remain far from learners already experiencing a literacy and numeracy crisis.
Apart from this, a second postponement of the first-ever BARMM parliamentary elections is on its way, waiting for further Senate probes in the coming months. Political leaders and advocates see the polls as an important development toward cultivating peace in the region–but delays in passing the needed legislation may further disrupt electoral and voter preparations. Another postponement is anticipated for the Barangay and SK Elections originally scheduled in 2026.
The call for citizens to organize and consolidate a majority vote for health, education, and TPA is paramount now more than ever. Just in time for the upcoming elections, G-Watch launches their yearly Ako, Ikaw, Tayo May Pananagutan (AIM-P) with the theme: “Making the 2025 Elections A Vote for Health, Education, and TPA.”
Every 14th of February, AIM-P aims to convene citizens and strategize an effective campaign for majority votes for health, education, and TPA in their local sites. Despite the distressing developments on governance in the country, the elections must maintain its integrity as a process that strengthens democracy and TPA. With citizens recognizing their identity as rights-holders, they begin to gauge their individual and community stakes should government inefficiency and corruption persist.
To contest nationally-consolidated power, a coordinated coalitional effort from allied organizations, movements, state allies, and citizens can effectively reach out to fellow voters to be more informed in considering candidates showing openness and responsiveness to relevant issues. A singular agenda through a health, education, and TPA vote increases the voice of civil society to the point that government would find it hard to ignore, and the elections are the direct manifestation of that.
Together with 2025’s AIM-P, G-Watch is also undertaking the next iteration of their citizen education initiative, Make Elections an Accountability Platform (MEAP). The MEAP campaign serves as a platform for citizens to collectively discuss the national situation and come up with crucial campaign agenda to be used in engaging and/ or gauging candidates and parties. MEAP forms part of G-Watch’s integrated citizen action that connects engagement in governance with electoral outcomes as key inter-connected components of an accountability ecosystem.
MEAP 2025 aims to turn the 2025 elections as a platform to advance G-Watch’s reform agenda on health, education, social protection and transparency-participation-accountability (TPA).