EDITORIAL - Innocent bystanders

The association of the word NGO to the pork barrel scam has cast non-government organizations in a very bad light. People now tend to react with derision at the mere mention of the word NGO, which to be sure is an unfair reaction.

There are a lot of NGOs operating in the country and a great many of them, perhaps even the vast majority, are working for causes and on initiatives that gave them their reason for being. These good NGOs are the able partners of government in serving the people.

But because of the pork barrel scam, in which several fake NGOs were used as conduits to siphon off huge amounts of money from the Priority Development Assistance Fund assigned to senators and congressmen, all NGOs as a whole have been rendered suspect.

Perhaps the only NGOs that can escape suspicion by the public are those that are clearly funded by foreign sources, usually by their parent organizations. But local NGOs, those that get assistance from local funding sources, will have to bear the brunt of the suspicion.

What these legitimate NGOs suffer forms part of the untold cost of the pork barrel scam fallout. While much of the attention falls on the scam itself and the extent to which it has corrupted the government, little or no attention is extended to how the scam has affected NGOs and their capacity to do their jobs.

Because of the mistrust spawned by the scam, NGOs that rely heavily on local funding sources will now probably have a hard time persuading these sources to continue their assistance. Surely these sources will need to push back a little and look at the picture with greater intensity.

With even a temporary freeze on funding, these NGOs cannot keep up with their commitments to their beneficiaries. Their work will slow down considerably, if not come to a complete stop suddenly. And this will derail the momentum of national progress that their initiatives that have helped set in motion.

In a country like the Philippines where government often fails, for whatever reason, to fulfill many of its vital obligations, NGOs step up to fill this very important gap. It is therefore very sad and unfortunate that the scam happened, and in a way that legitimate NGOs had to fall like proverbial innocent bystanders.