Pork barrel can be cleaned out now

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. expected how people would react to his call for “moral revolution”. Viewing him as a trapo (rag; traditional politico), he knew they’d sneer, “Look who’s talking.” So he matched his suggested cleansings by President Gloria Arroyo with his own promise to reform the pork barrel. “We shall make fund releases transparent,” he promised of the legislators’ annual largesse, as he gave Arroyo 100 days to show earnest in fighting corruption.

She ignored him. Like most Filipinos, the President feels the Speaker should be the last person to talk about morality. It simply didn’t wash. The Speaker is the first promoter of bad governance in guaranteeing for his 240 colleagues P70 million each a year, or P16.8 billion total, in no-audit shares. (An equal partner is the Senate President in ensuring a heftier P200 million for each of 24 senators, or another P4.8 billion.) In a patch-up dinner hosted by a friend, Arroyo showed what she thought of de Venecia’s moral revival: she screamed at him. Malacañang then fired off a statement that it should be the Speaker, because of his rank in government and in the ruling Lakas party, who should follow the President’s program of administration. And she exhibited no intent to heed his call to restore public trust in political leaders. Of the attempted P2-million bribery of opposition congressmen, the consummated P500,000 bribery of 189 administration counterparts, and the P500,000 bribery again of 60 provincial governors, Arroyo simply did nothing.

Sinning no more is so hard to do on one’s own. Left with his moral revolution by his lonesome, de Venecia began to waffle. At first, he said he would get congressmen to agree to line item disclosure of their pork barrel projects. Meaning, they would specify from the start — while the annual national budget is still being debated in Congress — where and how they’d spend their P70 million. But practically told by Arroyo to reform by himself, de Venecia is now saying it is too late this year for line itemizing. The House of Reps already has passed the 2008 expenditure bill and passed it on to the Senate for concurrence. Maybe next year transparency can come — if somebody remembers at all.

And so it’s back to square one of the despicable old pork setup. With no one leading a cleanup, congressmen will still get the money in secret tranches. They will use part of it for soft projects: the purchase of medicines for the poor, encyclopedias for municipal libraries, or computers for public schools — all at 50-percent overprice from long-time suppliers in Congress. There will be hard projects — construction of roads, bridges or piers — again for 50-percent cuts, this time by diverting the cash to family foundations. (The senators will have their own rackets.)

De Venecia is not as helpless to clean out the pork barrel as he paints himself to be. He can still make the expenses transparent by changing the way the money is released and spent. To begin with, it should be made available to all legislators, whether with the administration or the opposition (and thus plotting Arroyo’s impeachment). Then, congressmen must be made to identify their projects in detail. And these should be done via the Electronic Procurement Law, so that specifications and quantities of goods or services easily can be checked against contracted prices. And there should be strict pre- and post-audit. That way, with a reformed pork barrel, congressmen would see no more need for it. Indeed, who would want to be saddled with stringently announced and audited expenses, when they can just pass back the work to the executive branch, so long as their names are attached to the projects.

If de Venecia starts changing by Monday, he may come out a martyr. Next week is when Arroyo’s loyalist-congressmen are set to depose him because of his son Joey’s exposés of high corruption. If he pushes his moral crusade in the House just as they start ganging up on him, history may turn out kinder to this trapo.

* * *

Avoidance is the ploy of Malacañang. In canceling the crooked ZTE deal, it aimed to get the Senate to stop investigating the bribers and bribees. In asking the Ombudsman to investigate the bribery of governors right at the Palace gardens, it intended to divert attention from its earlier bribery of opposition and administration congressmen.

Unfortunately for Arroyo tacticians, thinking Filipinos are not fooled. Nineteen business and civil society groups are demanding that President Arroyo herself face the issue of “endemic transactional politics.” Along with the Management Association of the Philippines, Financial Executives Institute, Makati Business Club, and Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference, the groups want Arroyo to form an independent commission to examine the fraud. In an ad in yesterday’s Star, they also urged the Anti-Money Laundering Council to move in on the bribe givers and takers.

* * *

E-mail: [email protected]