"Pork is very much alive."
"Pork is very much alive."
The circus that the public is currently witnessing at the House of Representatives is a sad commentary on how the members go about trying to spend government money and distributing pork money among themselves. That they are washing their dirty linen in public is in a way good because it allows the public to see the machinations being undertaken by the honorable members of the House to fight for funds for their favorite projects.
This is in spite of the fact that on Nov. 19, 2013, the Supreme Court declared that the Priority Development Assistance Fund, which is another name for pork, was unconstitutional. This shows that not much has changed. Pork spending masquerading under other names is very much alive and well. Imagine—P60 million for each representative and P200 million for each senator, except Senator Ping Lacson who has consistently refused his share of the pork and is the self-appointed crusader against pork in Congress.
In actual fact, pork allocation is actually a lot more with some representatives getting much more than their normal allocation depending on how close one is to the powers that be. In the current squabble, we have learned that some House members got P1.5 billion. The criminal charges filed against high-ranking politicians, whose cases are still pending, and the imprisonment of Janet Lim Napoles have not deterred or stopped politicians from the allure of the pork.
One of the issues in the current controversy is the P8 billion given to two small towns in the Bicol region. It seems that this is being traced to Ben Diokno, the Budget Secretary. My neighbor in this paper, Rep. Danilo Suarez, the current minority leader in the House, is saying that this is because the daughter of Ben Diokno is married and related to politicians in the area. Suarez then authored a resolution urging the President to reconsider the appointment of Diokno as the Budget Secretary.
The House also wants to conduct a public hearing to get to the root of how the allocations came about. Unfortunately for them, Diokno has been prohibited from attending. He also has the backing and confidence of the one person that matters in this country, President Duterte.
It is doubtful, therefore, whether the House can come up with anything even if we can already deduce from the language coming from the members the real story. Those members calling for the head of Mr. Diokno will simply have to find a new way of eliciting the information they want from other sources. The translation of this is that there might be a reenacted budget for the coming year of 2019—unless both chambers can find a way to come to an agreement to move the P3.8-trillion proposed 2019 budget forward for the signature of President Duterte.
In the end, the betting is that the unresolved issue of the P75-billion pork which is not itemized and the abolition of the Road Users Fund will be resolved.
For one, the current Speaker of the House, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is an ally and supporter of the President and the House Minority leader Danilo Suarez is also an ally of the Speaker. It is hard to see why this issue cannot be resolved to the satisfaction of the quarreling members.
The Road Users Board should really be abolished because the position of those wanting to keep it is already untenable. For one, the President also wants it abolished. It is understandable that many would like its retention. The money that is being collected is increasing every year on account of the big increase of vehicles on the road. Since the money collected is not budgeted for a specific purpose, the money is a huge temptation on the part of lawmakers to dip their hands into the cookie jar. It may therefore be hard for congress to abolish it but there can be a solution on how to keep the funds from the hands of lawmakers by amending part of the law by putting a provision to spend the money for a specific purpose, like using the money to fund the construction of freeways only.
If the Road Users Fund remains the way it is, there will always be ways to circumvent the rules as we have seen with the 2013 Supreme Court ruling.
Senator Ping Lacson is fighting a lonely battle and is doubtful it will ever succeed. The fact however, that he is persistent and doing it is encouraging. The United States Congress from whom we inherited this unsavory practice have been able to reform the practice in such a way that all funds released intended for localized projects are all itemized. Our Congress should do the same.
* * *
That this squabble snarled Budget Secretary Ben Diokno into the controversy is something new. The guy is basically an academic who was brought to work in the government bureaucracy by then President Joseph Estrada and now President Duterte. He is also a very low-key official in spite of the importance of his position. It is therefore safe to say that compared to many of the people who have worked in government for much longer time, his experience in the dynamics of corruption is probably not as deep as the others. That is not to say however that anyone is entirely thoroughly schooled in it given the kind of money that is available to the different government agencies which is also getting bigger every year.
However this controversy is resolved, let us hope that the interest of the public is protected.