00:00Today on Rappler
00:12The 2026 budget will be signed in the first week of January.
00:17A majority of Filipinos still expect a happy Christmas this 2025.
00:21And Gailas coach Norman Black considers the 2025 SEA Games gold as his top achievement.
00:27Acting Executive Secretary Ralph Recto confirms the budget for 2026 will be signed by the President in the first week of January.
00:37This means the Philippine government will be operating on a re-enacted 2025 budget for at least the first few days of the new year.
00:45The committee, composed of members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, reconciled differences in both chambers' version of the proposed budget.
00:53Recto earlier told a media outlet,
00:56President Ferdinand Marcus Jr. is expected to sign the budget by January 5, 2026.
01:02This would be the first time in Marcus' presidency that a budget has to be re-enacted.
01:07Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Paying Laxon suggests,
01:09A briefly re-enacted 2025 budget is preferable to a rushed 2026 budget that is, quote,
01:16In a statement, Laxon also raised several issues open to potential abuse by politicians.
01:25This includes funding for farm-to-market roads and assistance programs such as the medical assistance to indigent and financially incapacitated patients, or MIFIP,
01:33and assistance to individuals in crisis situations, or AICS.
01:40About 68% of adult Filipinos think Christmas in 2025 will be happy, a 3 percentage point increase from 65% 2024.
01:50A social weather station survey shows only 7% expect a sad Christmas, while 25% think it will be neither happy nor sad.
02:00The 68% is lower than the 73% recorded in 2022 and 2023, the years after COVID-19 lockdowns.
02:09The number of people expecting a sad Christmas also went down to 7% in 2025 from 10% in 2024.
02:17The highest level of expected sadness was 15% 2020, during the pandemic.
02:22This despite the slower economic growth reported in the third quarter and an unchanged inflation recorded in October.
02:30Veteran coach Norman Black added another milestone to his decorated career after steering Gilas Pilipinas to the gold medal in the 2025 Southeast Asian Games,
02:41a triumph made more meaningful by the challenges the national team overcame along the way.
02:47Despite rule changes by the hosts and very little time to prepare, Black and the national team still succeeded.
02:54They won the country's 20th men's basketball title after a tough 70-64 victory over Thailand in the finals on Friday, December 19.
03:04Black and the samahang basketball ng Pilipinas scrambled to put a team together for the SEA Games.
03:10The lack of preparation was evident throughout the tournament, but Black and his coaching staff made the necessary adjustments.
03:16He says,
03:18When you've gone through what we've gone through to get up to this point, adversity doesn't seem that hard.
03:24We basically just go out and fight and pull together.
03:28And that's today's wrap. I'm Dwight DeLeon. Thank you for watching. Merry Christmas.
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