Let’s join the march tomorrow against the pork

The reportage of a certain Janet Napoles being the alleged author of a multi-billion peso pork barrel scam makes many Filipinos, not including some lawmakers, hate her. If, and this is a very big 'if', this accusation holds water such that following an almost interminable prosecution, a conviction pronouncing her guilt beyond reasonable doubt is decreed, her incredible caper can easily top all moneymaking stories printed in the Forbes magazine and it is inevitable that she can be crowned the mother of all fraudulent schemers. Again, and to be sure, that is a big 'if'.

It may be because I have nothing much to spend that I was incensed reading the details contained by social media showing how her daughter splurged. Really, she put Cristina Onassis, that heiress of that once-upon-a-time flamboyant Greek billionaire, Aristotle, who swiped Jackie Kennedy from American mythology, to shame. The reported listing of high-end houses in gated subdivisions as belonging to Janet, if true, could snipe us into a glimpse of a possible mental aberration that may deserve psychiatric help. No one in her right mind would amass that many a residence. And we pretend to ignore the long line of luxurious cars, allegedly hers too, or her family's, because such report stokes our emotions almost to the point that we could, if given the opportunity, lynch her.

But, if we only care to examine the situation, the suspected lady dipped her fingers (oh my gosh, who ever coined this quote, should have used instead the word hands to demonstrate enormity), into the public pie, could not have, so callously and rather easily, done it without the blessings, if not the conspiracy, of some of our “honorable” officials.

Indeed, the pork, judging from the shameful but scattered stories of the past, has been there and it still is there to be stolen. It is an inexhaustible source of expendible funds. You need proof? Listen to the words of a lady representative of a Luzon province. The pork, according to her shameless admission, is her source of funds to give to people rationalizing that she would never touch her private savings. I am certain she was telling the truth, never mind if we would puke at her averment.

The best way to put this pork beyond the hands of the corrupt, and there are aplenty, is to abolish it. This PDAF must be removed from the influences of the senators and congressmen. After all, if we read the constitution, legislative power simply means making and/or repealing laws and certainly it does not seem to include such executive functions as constructing covered courts. Let government do away with the pork. Maintaining it under streamlined processes of its availment, as some wiseguys suggested is actually only streamlining the corrupt practices. 

Let us ask why His Excellency, President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, at the beginning of the exposé, seemed reluctant to share our feeling of betrayal? In fact, when we started to clamor for the abolition of the pork, he chose to be silent. Only last Friday, many weeks since Napoles hit the headlines, when it became clear that the call for the removal of the PDAF has begun to snowball, that the president went public his stand. Even then, what he said was, to me, unclear.

To make our collective position against the presence of the pork in our system, we have to demonstrate our number. Let us show it to President Aquino. Historically, our president can be swayed by the horde of people asking for something. To recall, he was not sure of running for president in 2010. But when he saw the millions who joined the funeral procession of his mother, many months before the elections, he knew he had numbers.

Tomorrow, a march for the abolition of the pork is set. This must be a people's march. Everybody must stand to be counted. For so long a time, I have stayed away from mass actions for I felt them irrelevant. This time, I will join the organizers. The cause is most patriotic. No dizzying rain will stop me. Not even the sparks of solar explosion. I hope to see you there, tomorrow!

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