Pork barrel state

It was the visionary Jose Almonte, I recall, who coined the phrase “pork barrel state” to describe our politics.

That was such a vivid description of a political culture where the central purpose of power was to loot the public sphere, often in the name of charity. It was the outcome of an oligarchic society where the political elite drew support by means of patronage and nothing else, commandeering state resources for the purpose.

The pork barrel – public funds dispensed entirely on the personal discretion of power wielders – is at the core of what we denounce as “traditional politics.” Money politics is the medium by which power is accessed and support is secured. It enables politicians to claim personal credit for what the state, as a matter of primal function, ought to be delivering to its citizens.

For the pork barrel state to thrive, institutions must be kept weak. This allows charisma to displace procedure, personal whim to displace the rules. It produces a government where merit does not count: it is never what you know but who you know that determines advancement. The most familiar illustration for this is the requirement for a letter of endorsement from politicians to land a job in the public service.

Because we have a pork barrel state, we are one of very few countries where franchises are awarded by way of congressional action instead of through transparent public bidding. Public resources, such as a slice of available national bandwidth, are awarded as political favors rather than as a rational market decision. The procedure is vulnerable to large-scale bribery.

Little wonder that the House committee on franchises has always been a very large committee. The most useless committee has the most members. The very existence of that committee is an anomaly. When franchises are awarded for free, they are actually costlier.

Former national treasurer Leonor Briones estimates the presidential pork barrel at about a trillion pesos. That might be a bit of an overstatement, although it underscores the humungous amount of money at the President’s discretion.

Today, we are in the midst of yet another great public debate over the pork barrel. At the center of this debate is Janet Lim Napoles and the syndicate for laundering pork barrel funds she supposedly put together. The laundered funds amount to billions and might explain the fabulous lifestyle Napoles leads.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Napoles, although not yet for the scam itself but for the illegal detention of an assistant-turned-whistleblower. Her personal accounts and those of her businesses, amounting to 415, are frozen. Her passport is cancelled. She is now a fugitive.

Senate President Franklin Drilon, in the face of criticism for his chamber’s unwillingness to conduct its own public hearings on the matter, issued a facile statement last weekend asking the investigators to hurry up with their work. That is not possible. This is a phenomenon where the more you dig, the bigger the problem becomes.

Napoles is not even the tip of the iceberg. She is a technician, a facilitator, a connector. She is simply more efficient at what everybody does. At best, she is the icon for the problem.

The COA report released late last week on PDAF expenditures from 2009 to 2010 indicates the scale of the matter at hand. There are simply no rules for the release of pork barrel funds. The NGOs controlled by Napoles are only a small part of the universe of questionable outfits receiving pork disbursements. No one really checks on how the money is used.

Those who claim to know how the system works say the running rate for kickbacks from the “soft” components of the PDAF now runs at 70%. For the “hard” components (involving some sort of physical structure paid out of the PDAF), the rate is 40%. Operators like Napoles get some sort of “service fee” from the smaller portion of the disbursement; the politicians get the bulk.

The congressional pork barrel system seems designed to be corrupted. Napoles mastered a bankrupt setup.

I recall, as a schoolboy in the late sixties, seeing editorial cartoons that pictured our legislators as crocodiles. Politicians were denounced as “buwaya.” Leakage from the pork barrel is not a recent phenomenon.

Arresting Napoles will merely take out one of many operators; it will not cure the malaise.

It will not even be enough to take out the congressional pork barrel system (although President Aquino is unwilling to do even that). Heads of most agencies in the executive branch (and constitutional bodies) enjoy pork barrel privileges disguised as “intelligence funds.” The President controls the billions earned by the Pagcor and the PCSO flowing into the President’s Social Fund, aside from tens of billions more in discretionary spending.

Critics of the conditional cash transfer program describe this as part and parcel of pork barrel politics. It is a funny program that hands out money to millions without solving poverty. Politicians have admitted to me the cash transfer program made reelection so easy. The CCT, to be sure, buys popularity for incumbents; it also bloats the public debt.

Pork barrel politics is the dragon to be slain here. That is what is traditional in what we call “traditional politics.”

It is doubtful, however, if the present administration is capable of providing the heroic, transformative leadership that will cure the malaise. This administration operates the largest pork barrel in our political history.