Life in the pigsty

With the pork barrel manure hitting the fan, President Aquino is starting to receive the same criticism hurled against his mother during her years in power: she herself remained clean, but almost everyone around her was tainted.

Worse, critics believed many of those around Corazon Aquino capitalized on her sincerity and honesty (her proffered weapons against the Marcos dictatorship) to deodorize their questionable activities.

President Cory often sparred with the media. She sued The STAR for libel (she won in the lower court, but lost in the Court of Appeals). The mostly young brats who covered her at Malacañang boycotted her at one point. Her spokesman called us brain-dead. The president of the press corps responded with a critical op ed titled “Holy cow” – actually meaning sacred cow – and the spokesman rested his case.

Compared with press coverage of other presidents, however, President Cory had it easy; the media cut the icon of people power – and those around her – a lot of slack. People knew national reconstruction after Marcos wasn ’t going to be easy.

Her only son is not as lucky. After 27 years of dysfunctional democracy, Pinoy patience with government is wearing thin.

If President Aquino doesn’t watch out, he could find himself all by his lonesome, pitching for daang matuwid while those around him take the daang baluktot or crooked path.

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Or at least that’s the scenario being painted by administration critics these days. How much of the picture is based on reality is uncertain.

Even P-Noy supporters, however, believe several of his officials and political allies have strayed from the straight path, or had taken a detour right from the start.

Within the first half of his term, some of P-Noy’s closest aides have fallen by the wayside. Shooting buddy Rico Puno left the Department of the Interior and Local Government with no new assignment; was he shunted to the Manila Economic and Cultural Office?

Another shooting buddy (and presidential province mate), Virginia Torres, is leaving the Land Transportation Office at the end of the month.

Because their alleged improprieties are forgiven and forgotten, however, even their departure from government does not appease P-Noy’s critics, who accuse him of selective probes and persecution.

Several administration allies in the Senate are among the lawmakers and local government executives who allegedly misused pork barrel funds. This is according to a Commission on Audit report and the whistle-blowers in the scam allegedly perpetrated by Janet Lim-Napoles.

Currently under fire is the Senate President himself, Franklin Drilon, long-time friend of the Aquino family and a stalwart of P-Noy’s Liberal Party.

Drilon, a lawyer, may have sound legal arguments for preferring to take the advice of Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales against allowing Napoles to face the Senate’s pork barrel probe.

With photos being uploaded on the Internet, however, showing Drilon with Napoles, the suspicion is that he fears the controversial businesswoman may disclose dealings with him that, in the light of the scandal, will be deemed improper.

Napoles may decide that if she’s going to hell, she might as well bring down as many people as she can with her. This looks like the mindset of the opposition senators implicated in the scam, among them Jinggoy Estrada and the head of the once ruling Lakas-NUCD, Sen. Bong Revilla.

Because of the Senate fight over Napoles, Drilon took flak even for joining P-Noy in the state visit to South Korea. Palace officials were the ones who had to explain that Drilon wanted to thank Seoul for funding a development project that he endorsed for his home province of Iloilo.

Drilon, of course, can always thank Seoul for the project through its embassy in Manila. Given the toxic political atmosphere, P-Noy and his party should set the example in putting an end to lawmakers piggybacking on presidential trips overseas to justify junkets. Worse for Drilon, he joined the trip at the height of the debate over the Senate subpoena for Napoles, which he refused to sign.

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Administration officials are reportedly surprised, if not grudgingly impressed, by Jinggoy Estrada’s success in diverting public attention away from the misuse of the congressional pork barrel and redirecting it to P-Noy’s realignment of discretionary funds under the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

P-Noy can look on the bright side and consider the flak an indication that he is held to a higher standard of propriety than his predecessors.

The buzz is that there’s an ongoing battle for hearts and minds in the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the DAP.

The SC has twice upheld the constitutionality of the pork barrel or PDAF, the Priority Development Assistance Fund, in 2001 and last year – three times if you count an earlier SC ruling on the PDAF precursor called the Countrywide Development Fund. Regardless of the SC’s decision on the latest challenge to the constitutionality of the PDAF, it will be abolished in the 2014 national appropriation.

Of greater concern to the administration is the fate of the DAP, and how to return public attention to the pork barrel scam.

There are two options. One is to push for the filing of formal complaints against administration allies implicated in COA reports covering P-Noy’s watch. This will blunt accusations of selective persecution.

A second option is to let Napoles face the Senate Blue Ribbon committee.

Daang matuwid stalwarts often say that those who have nothing to hide should have nothing to fear. They should follow their own admonition instead of giving the impression that it’s tough to stay clean in a pigsty.