ON PORK BARREL FUND: The recent talks these days, edging out debates among lawmakers over what to do with pork barrel funds disguised as Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), reminds me of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. He said: Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridge even where there is no river. In a way, the same can be said of our very own politicians in general. But Khrushchev’s description is quite inaccurate when applied to our honorable congressmen. As promised, our honorable lawmakers are indeed building bridges, roads, waiting sheds and health centers etc., only that most of these public works projects are SUBSTANDARD. Because our lawmakers visualize themselves as pseudo-DPWH, they utilize pork funds to support pet projects, mostly public works, to impress upon their constituents that they have done well with their fund. But beneath all this, the favored contractor, the one tasked to undertake the project, is obligated to hand over a chunk of the pork fund, known as kick back, to your honorable congressman. What is left of the pork fund would now go to the projects. This is why most public works projects are substandard, and are in need of continuous repairs despite huge allocations given to them. This scenario is all too familiar for Filipinos. Yet we allowed it to be part of our political culture. We have permitted ourselves to participate in patronage politics by electing lawmakers who end up worse than those slaves who would fight over barrels of left over food to survive the game. Yes, most of those who are against the abolition of PDAF are slaves too in their own right. `They are enslaved by their own greed, lust for power and hubris. I support the call to junk PDAF altogether. Lawmakers are supposed to make laws, repeal laws, and alter laws. That is their primary duty as enshrined in the Constitution. Public works implementation ostensibly through PDAF, is an executive function. The President, as one commentator opined, can easily abolish pork barrel by not including in its budgetary proposals. Congress, by way of tradition and under the 1987 Constitution, cannot add anything outside the specified budget recommended by the President, the most that they can do is to decrease the figures. Now it is up to P-Noy’s “Matuwid na daan,” to walk its talk. Or has P-Noy succumbed to the dynamics of executive-legislative politics over principles?
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 11:51:23 +0000
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