As I See It.... Pork barrel starts in Malacañang

By Neal Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:09:00 11/10/2010

I WAS gladdened by the letter to the editor yesterday of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad commenting on this column of Nov. 3 about the worsening pork barrel allocations. (The column dwelt on the increasing amounts of pork for congressmen in the midst of substantial cuts in the budgets of departments catering to services to the people, especially education and health.) Abad agreed that the pork barrel “is a key source of corruption” but added that the “Aquino administration is hell-bent on ensuring that the pork barrel will be used for the common good, not for the private benefit of anybody.”
Abad said measures to insure transparency and accountability in the disbursement of pork funds have been integrated in the 2011 Reform Budget. One of these measures, he said, requires the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) which he heads, and other agencies, to post on their websites the releases, realignments and relevant details on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF, the official name for the pork barrel), such as the names of project, beneficiaries, project implementation status, project evaluation and assessment, among others.
“The publication of these details empowers the media, civil society and the general citizenry to regularly inspect whether each legislator’s PDAF is being spent properly for the benefit of their constituents,” Abad said.
Nice to hear, Mr. Secretary, but the corruption stems from the kickbacks that contractors give to the congressmen and other government characters, so that only half of the project’s budget actually goes to the project itself, thus resulting in substandard infrastructure projects. And kickbacks are by nature hidden.
The law mandates that the awards for the projects be done through public bidding (another alleged example of transparency) but we all know that the bidding is a “moro-moro,” that the contractors agree among themselves who would win, and that it usually is the congressman’s favorite contractor, in exchange for which the contractor kicks back part of the budget to the congressman.
That transparency crap is like that crap being peddled by the congressmen that the PDAF does not pass through their hands. They just identify the projects, they say. That may be true but, as I said, the corruption and theft of funds stem from the kickbacks. And the corruption involves not only the congressmen but also contaminates many other public servants such as public works engineers, treasurers and cashiers who release the checks, division chiefs and secretaries and clerks and, the unkindest cut, the watchdogs themselves, the auditors.
Worse, the corruption goes all the way up to Malacañang, because the pork barrel is a form of bribe to the members of Congress. With this bribe, the President keeps them in line. Cooperative lawmakers get their pork released promptly, uncooperative ones don’t. Besides the regular pork, congressmen are given shopping bags with bundles of cash when they are invited to Malacañang, at least during the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
It would have been simple and easy for Malacañang to abolish the pork barrel. All it has to do is not include in its budget proposal the appropriation for the PDAF or any other hidden pork with different innocent-sounding names, and that’s the end of it. Congress cannot add any appropriation not in the original budget proposal of the Executive Department. It can only add or subtract amounts to and from them. But every year, Malacañang includes this form of bribe in its budget proposal.
The people had expected that the “reform-minded” Aquino administration would finally abolish the pork barrel system which the Constitution does not authorize and which, as the budget secretary himself admits, is “a key source of corruption.” Whatever happened to the Aquino battlecry “kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap”?
The reason we have millions of “mahirap” is that corruption is not being beaten but is, on the contrary, winning. If the President himself is a party to the pork barrel system, then corruption is winning.
Abad said there is no “pork barrel allocation” tacked on to the P21-billion conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. But didn’t the congressmen ask for their own insertions in the CCT fund before they would approve the budget? What happened to that, considering that the budget was passed by the House with haste?
Abad also said that I was incorrect that the budget for education has been reduced. The budget for the Department of Education, he said, has been increased.
Oh yeah? So why was the capital outlay for state universities and colleges abolished in the P1.645-trillion national budget approved by the House?
He also said that “it is not accurate to say that each congressman will receive an additional P50-million pork barrel on top of their P70-million PDAF. The P50 million is a ‘floor’ amount set for infrastructure projects per district. Only those with less than P50 million will have their allocations increased to P50 million.”
Question: Why is it necessary to give them another P50 million when they still have the P70-million PDAF pork? Isn’t the P50 million “infrastructure” fund additional pork? Infrastructure is the territory of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), why make each congressman a duplicate DPWH?
“The P2.2-billion infrastructure fund supposedly allotted for” Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Pampanga district, Abad continued, are “foreign-assisted key infrastructure projects” and not pork.
I said that, but the aid from Japan and Korea are not donations or grants but loans which all the Filipinos, and not Pampanga beneficiaries alone, will have to pay with interest.