Pork barrel stays, despite public outrage, SC ruling

The congressional pork barrel is alive. Sen. Jinggoy Estrada has reinserted P200 million in personal discretionary lump sum in the 2014 national budget. So have eight other senators kept P200-million slabs each of the Priority Development Assistance Fund.

How this came about, coupled with lame justifications, show one thing. The hated PDAF will stay — in new forms and names — in defiance of public outcry and the Supreme Court’s 14-0 ruling to abolish it.

As bared by The STAR, Estrada saw a loophole to keep his P200-million PDAF. There was in Malacañang’s 2014 budget bill an outlay of the same amount, as “LGU (local government units) Support Fund.” It purportedly was to boost the share of unspecified provinces, cities and municipalities from national tax collections. Estrada matched it with his own P200 million. He detailed the beneficiary LGUs and amounts: P100 million to the City of Manila, P50 million to the City of Caloocan, P50 million to the municipality of Lal-lo, Cagayan.

Estrada’s did his reinserting at the last minute, during closed-door bicameral conferences to reconcile the Senate and House of Reps budget versions. The two chambers’ appropriations committees let it pass, and separate plenaries enacted it as part of the P2.265-trillion budget. President Noynoy Aquino signed it into law.

All this came after six months of exposing multibillion-peso plunders of the PDAF in 2008-2009. After criminal charges were filed against Senators Estrada, Juan Ponce Enrile, and Bong Revilla. After Aquino denounced them as “thieves.” After protest marches in major cities and petitions in social media demanded the “pork” removal. After the SC unanimously ruled that the PDAF is unconstitutional for being discretionary lump sums by which lawmakers blunt the power of the Executive.

The implications are grave. Exclusivist politics will continue to reign, via the entwined evils of dynasties, electoral fraud, and opacity.

Aquino did not, could not veto Estrada’s P200-million rider. He had no ascendancy to do so. For, Malacañang’s original LGU Support Fund of like amount was a presidential “pork.” It did not specify which LGUs were to get how much, just that the President would have sole power to dole it to whoever he wishes. If the President would have his way, then so too Estrada. And all the other lawmakers acceded, in the political principle of you scratch my back and I scratch yours.

Budget Sec. Florencio Abad claims, in the wake of The STAR report, that Estrada’s P200-million insertion is subject to “conditions.” That is, the President can withhold its release. That’s meaningless in the backdrop of public and SC resistance to “pork.” If at all, it highlights the discretionary, therefore unconstitutional, nature of the LGU Support Fund. In defending Estrada’s insertion, Sen. Francis Escudero says his finance committee actually added P205 million in all to the original Malacañang proposal. Why he has not offered to state who inserted the P5 million more shows that the lawmakers’ first instinct is to conceal info from the public.

Estrada’s preference for only three LGUs is telling. Not only is his father, ex-President Joseph Estrada now mayor of Manila. The mayors of Caloocan and Lal-lo also reportedly are close allies of Vice President Jejomar Binay and Senator Enrile of Cagayan. The elder Estrada, Binay, and Enrile are the “Three Kings of the Opposition.” They dictate how mild or severe the attacks would be on the Aquino tenure. Critics of the May 2013 congressional elections believe that the Comelec placated Malacañang and the Three Kings with the results. Without finishing the vote count, it proclaimed majority of Aquino’s senatorial candidates, among them his cousin Bam Aquino. The Three Kings too were pleased that Estrada’s son JV Ejercito, Binay’s daughter Nancy, and Enrile’s protégé Gregorio Honasan were winners.

The alibi of lawmakers to reinsert their PDAFs rests on hairsplitting. Supposedly the SC stated that they may realign lump sums in Malacañang’s yearly budget proposals to their preferred beneficiaries — so long as it’s done during Congress’ budget hearings. Yet they ignore the gist of the SC ruling, which is, that the “pork” is wrong because, by being discretionary lump sums, they defy the constitutional requirement of accountability and transparency.

Estrada’s P100 million to Manila and P50 million each to Caloocan and Lal-lo are discretionary lump sums from him to the mayors. There are no details on which LGU projects are to be funded. There are no safeguards against the taxpayers’ money going into personal pockets — again.

Lawmakers calculate that the people’s outcry against the PDAF has died down. Perhaps they even think that SC justices would strike down any new petition against the PDAF’s sly permutations. This is because of incessant chatter about impeachment and scrutiny of judicial spending — to make the justices toe the line.

Then again, lawmakers might not see coming a stronger wave of anti-”pork” protests. This is the first quarter of the year, when political upheavals occur in the Philippines every 15 years or so — in 1970, 1986, and 2001.

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