Pork

The most meaningful thing President Aquino can say on Monday is to call for an end to the pork barrel system. To back up that call, the budget to be submitted by the executive branch should exclude the notorious Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

It is unlikely, however, that the President will do that. As congressman and then as senator, he was a prolific user of the PDAF. As Chief Executive, he has discovered the joy of using the pork barrel in order to control the legislative branch.

The volume of “leakages” (to use technocratic euphemism) from the PDAF is well known. The only thing shocking in the scandal involving Janet Lim-Napoles is the scale of this single operation as well as the facility by which the scams are done.

This will console no one: The scam attributed to Napoles is not the only such game in town. As this scandal burns, it will burn a lot more in the firmament of power. Understand that this sort of operation cannot involve legislators alone. It requires the active collaboration of those in the executive branch in control of disbursements.

This scandal rocks the credibility of the legislature more than any single incident in the past. It is hard to imagine how the Congress will live this down. The only sure step forward towards redeeming our institutions, unlikely as it might be, is to abolish the PDAF.

The PDAF is such an anomalous arrangement. Those who control the purse also participate in its disbursement. The judge is also the executioner.

It is such a blatant instrument of patronage politics. In the US, where some sort of pork barrel mechanism is in place, legislators resort to “earmarks”. They have to work a little harder to allocate projects to their localities explicitly defined in the appropriations act. Here, each legislator is allocated a sum of money — P200 million for senators and P70 million for congressmen — from which they can draw down like it were a private bank account.

The allocation may be supplemented by the legislators if they exert effort in making congressional insertions in the appropriations law. Even if they do not do anything, they have money in the bag, restricted only if the administration decides to withhold release of their PDAF for uncooperative behavior.

This arrangement is an open invitation to corruption.

Only one candidate in the last elections openly declared his opposition to the PDAF arrangement and actually won a seat in Congress: Lito Atienza, who is first nominee of the Buhay party list.

Atienza is trying to schedule a privilege speech at the House to detail his opposition to pork barrel politics and very likely spill more beans on the larceny that envelopes this mechanism. He is a man with a long memory of our politics and an insider’s view of our political realities.

He recalls for instance that during the period prior to martial rule, the pork barrel resembled the earmarking system in the US. Legislators had to work hard to get their pet projects through the bicameral legislative mill.

He was with the tiny opposition with seats at the Batasang Pambansa during the period of authoritarianism. During that time, the KBL, which enjoyed an overwhelming majority, tried to install some sort of pork barrel allocation for each representative in the amount of P2 million (minuscule compared to today’s pork barrel standards).

The tiny Unido-affiliated opposition staunchly opposed the proposal, saying it was patently illegal. They were guided at that time by the wisdom of the late Justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma. The KBL majority was never able to put in a pork barrel mechanism.

The pork barrel in its present form (as a fixed allocation for all legislators) was introduced during the presidency of Corazon Aquino. The politicians wanted it; President Cory relented. There the saga of pork barrel corruption truly begins.

I recall one of the candidate debates during the last campaign, Neri Colmenares of Bayan Muna was asked if he would fight for the abolition of the pork barrel. The leftist representative said he would not. More than that, he would work for an increase in the allocation because his constituents needed the funds.

After the Napoles scandal broke out, the leftist party list groups beat everybody else to the gun by filing a bill abolishing the pork barrel. How quickly they change their minds when public opinion shifts. They are as flimsy as Senator Franklin Drilon who said one day the pork barrel must go and the next day said that it should stay.

In 2004, a group of very senior lawyers led by Ceferino Padua and Bartolome Fernandez filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to declare the PDAF unconstitutional. The petition languished in the Tribunal for many long years. When the Court finally ruled, it simply upheld Congress’ power over the purse.

Long before the Napoles scandal broke out, we did not want for voices arguing against the PDAF. They argued in vain.

The legislators did not want to do away with the gravy train that made their constituents happy and gave them disposable cash. Pork addiction became worse as the culture of patronage politics deepened.

Presidents did not want to do away with the pork barrel. It gave them an efficient (albeit immoral) handle to control the Congress by controlling the flow of pork barrel money. Presidents did not have to exercise moral and intellectual leadership to gain a following in legislature.

Meanwhile, pork barrel politics causes our democracy to rot.