What now?

Looks like the country's lawmakers will be left with nothing to do but craft new laws for the betterment of the country. But isn't that what they were meant to do in the first place? That's why they are called lawmakers, duh? After all the exposure by the whistleblowers on the anomalous use of the lawmakers' Priority Development Assistance Fund, more notoriously known as the pork barrel, the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program of the Aquino administration may have fallen victim to the same scam, by the apparent same principal perpetrator, Janet Lim Napoles.

Four senators have now been tagged in the misuse of their respective requests for funds from the DAP. Documents show that they requested for around one hundred million pesos to be transferred to several NGOs, all of which were formed by, you guessed it, Janet Lim Napoles. The documents show their respective signatures on the fund requests, which have already been called by some of the senators in question as faked or forged. I guess they will have their chance to formally air their sides and defend themselves, when cases are officially filed against them by the Ombudsman. Something I'm sure everyone anticipates.

In light of these revelations, the Palace has suspended all DAP fund requests by lawmakers. The Palace believes that the DAP may have been misused, and the prudent thing to do is to suspend the program altogether. What now? Lawmakers will be left with nothing to do but craft useful laws. Something I'm sure most of them have no idea how to do. It also gives them so much more time to work on these laws, rather than ask for funds and give them to God knows who. They won't be able to work on their respective per projects, preparing the way for their re-election come 2016. People just might forget who they are, if they don't really work for their constituents. And I mean real, hard, work, not just throwing money around. I really wonder who is up to the future task at hand. Some have quipped that nobody will probably run in 2016, which is actually funny if not tragic.

Reports are also coming in that properties apparently owned by Janet Lim Napoles are hitting the market at rock-bottom prices, in an apparent attempt to unload them and turn them into cash, before the government seizes everything that she has. Since anomalies from both the PDAF and DAP have been exposed, the only thing left to do is run with what you've got, right? Cash is king, so they say. And cash is a lot easier to hide and move around than physical properties like properties and cars, even jewelry. Cash can literally be buried somewhere, to be retrieved when the coast is clear. But it seems they are already several steps ahead of the government, something that has happened time and time again in plunder cases. The Garcia case, the Ligot case and so forth.

With the disbursement of funds now practically history for lawmakers, it will be interesting to see what they do in their remaining years in office. I'm also curious as to what they will do for their constituents. Some have said that they couldn't help those who ask for it without the PDAF, or the DAP. Well, they have several of their colleagues to thank for that, don't they? I'm certain the disbursement of funds will be subject to a lot more scrutiny from now on. From now on, the politicians will really have to work for their bosses.

Kind of refreshing, actually. If it does happen, that is.