Manila, Philippines (The Adobo Chronicles) – Previously, The Adobo Chronicles reported that ‘selfitis’ was officially added as a new word in the Oxford Dictionaries of English.

Today, a new word was added to the Tagalog (Pilipino) Dictionary, thanks to a new government fund scam uncovered by the country’s Commission on Audit (COA).  The new word is Malampaya.

Origin

Malampaya is a $4.5 Billion project started in 2002 off Palawan Island in the Philippines.  Operated by Shell Philippines Exploration BV and Chevron Malampaya LLC, it involves the extraction of natural gas off the waters of Palawan.

The service contract provides for a production-sharing scheme in which the government gets 60 percent of earnings from the operation.

Part of the government’s share — 900 Million pesos — was allotted for the rehabilitation of farms in 97 towns devastated by powerful storms. Instead, COA alleged that the amount was siphoned off and channeled to questionable non-governmental organizations, mostly associated with businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the incarcerated alleged mastermind of another fund scandal, a 10 Billion-peso pork barrel scam which benefited many top government officials.

In the Tagalog language, there is a word — Manampalataya — which means “to have faith.”

The Commission on the Filipino Language thought it appropriate to add the new word Malampaya to the Tagalog Dictionary because of this recent fund scam.  It will mean the exact opposite of Manampalataya.

The new word entry was indeed added to mean “to lose faith.”

Filipino language experts immediately hailed the new word addition, saying that “with the unending government fund scams and scandals that have preyed on taxpayer money, we urgently needed a new word to express our loss of faith in the government.”

Malampaya v., inf. lose faith; withdraw one’s faith in something, i.e., in a corrupt government