EDITORIAL - An overlooked evil in pork

Aside from all the evils that people have already ascribed to the pork barrel, let one more be added -- that pork provides a convenient alibi to do away with what is intrinsically the primary duty of a legislator, be he a councilor, board member, congressman or senator.

And that primary duty is to legislate, to craft laws that regulate our lives, set policy, and instill order and discipline. It is this function that separates a legislator from all the other government officials to whose authority we submit and from whom we expect leadership.

Pork, in the one thing that it may do good, provides projects and services closer to home, projects and services that otherwise may be overlooked in the general mayhem that is public governance. But projects and services can be provided by anyone in the entire gamut of public service.

They do not have to be the exclusive domain of legislators. What exclusivity may attach to a lawmaker's functions is that by which he is precisely called -- to make laws. Projects and services that come from pork are just extras. They are not the main thing.

That is why it is very bad for pork to be used to sustain the idea that projects and services are the main thing lawmakers are expected to do in their respective jurisdictions. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening.

In fact, everything has gotten so confused that everyone, from councilors to board members to congressmen to senators have only one mantra to chant during elections. And that is to provide projects and services. Not one of them ever promises meaningful legislation.

And that is how the voters weigh their voting options. The value of legislation has been successfully supplanted by promises of what pork can buy in projects and services. The methodology of political choice has been completely overturned.

This is the single biggest reason why the quality of our legislators is what it is. Because legislators are no longer chosen on the basis of their capacity to craft great laws. They are chosen on the basis of their willingness to part with some of their pork for purposes of generating projects and services.