So the people may know... read on.. Aquino defies SC, renames pork September 1, 2014 1:50 am by Rigoberto Tiglao President Benigno S. Aquino 3rd has defied the Supreme Court’s ruling that the pork barrel system is unconstitutional and has maintained the system in the 2014 budget, as well as in the 2015 proposed appropriations law. pnoy-pbNo wonder the House of Representatives continues to be Aquino’s bootlicking servants. He has merely renamed it, and to go around one aspect of the Court’s ruling, he has itemized most, but not all, of the projects that congressmen want, from which they could easily siphon off taxpayers’ money. The “old style” mechanism for pork barrel allocated the amounts for projects to be identified by each district representative after the budget law’s enactment. In Aquino’s new version of the pork barrel, each project (named and In Aquino’s new version of the pork barrel, each project (named and unnamed) is officially allocated and listed in an annex to the budget law, all 500 pages of them. Funding for the “projects” is pre-determined and settled through backroom and secret consultations between the budget department and the co-opted legislators. A glimpse of this secretive process was exposed by party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio, who released a tape by Department of Health undersecretary Janette Garin’s statement explaining how congressmen will designate people they want to receive subsidy from the department’s hospitals for their treatments. In another case: Commission on Higher Education chairman Patricia Licuanan told legislators that her agency had reserved P14 million in scholarships for students to be designated by congressmen. Whether congressmen designate the projects before or after the budget becomes law hardly matters in practice. First, legislators will still be able to extract kickbacks from private contractors undertaking the projects. Second, Aquino and his budget secretary will still be able to realign the funds for each district. And third, they can withhold the release of the funds for some flimsy reason if a congressman goes against Aquino, which would be crucial for an impeachment vote against him. The pork barrel fund was officially named Countrywide Development Fund during Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos’ terms; “Lingap para sa Mahihirap Program Fund” under Joseph Estrada; and Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) under the Gloria Arroyo and Aquino administrations. On November 2013, the Supreme Court declared the PDAF as unconstitutional. Now, to hide the pork barrel fund from the Supreme Court and the nation, Aquino gave it an innocuous name in his 2015 budget proposal – the “Grassroots Participatory Budgeting Projects.” For the 2014 budget, he had termed it “Bottom-Up Budgeting,” until one adviser pointed out that it sounds like “bottoms-up” which connotes a celebration – by them and the congressmen over the continuance of their pork barrel. The Supreme Court last year clearly ordered an end to what it eloquently termed as an “error, which has persisted in the chronicles of our history.” But Aquino, in an act of insolence, even increased the pork barrel money for congressmen from the P15.7 billion in 2011 and 2012, to P20.1 billion in 2014, and P20.9 in 2015. Nefarious schemes It has been this administration’s style to hide its nefarious schemes under noble names (the better to fool the yellow believers who are not known for their facility for critical thinking). For instance, it created the “Disbursement Acceleration Program” (DAP) supposedly for poverty reduction but it was really a hijacking of Congress-approved budget items to raise funds to bribe senators to oust a Chief Justice and to boost the Liberal Party’s election kitty. Another was its proposed “Truth Commission,” which was actually just a kangaroo court to attack the previous administration. Both were shot down by the High Court. In a bid to go around the Supreme Court ruling, Aquino asked congressmen to give his Administration a list of projects they want in their localities to be placed under “Grassroots Participatory Budgeting,” subtitled the “Priority Poverty Reduction Projects.” It’s just pork, plain and simple. Aquino and his pork barrel mastermind, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, are taking the voters for fools who would readily believe that these local projects were recommended by the “masses.” “Grassroots Participatory Budgeting” (GPB) projects in Aquino’s 2015 budget proposal allocates P75 million to the tiny province of Batanes (official population: 17,000), where Abad’s wife Henedina is congresswoman. This, despite the widespread outrage over the DAP’s fiasco and the public calls for Abad’s resignation, including by allies who fear Abad has ruined forever the reputation of Aquino. In what reflects his total lack of delicadeza, Abad even increased his wife’s pork barrel to P75 million from the P58 million annual average she got from 2011-2013. The P75 million was distributed equally at P12.5 million to each of Batanes’ six towns. Rather than having such projects as a “birthing facility,” “goat production,” and another round of “capacity-building” seminars, it might have made more sense for Mrs. Abad to just distribute directly that P75 million to the island’s regular residents, who are said to total only 10,000, as many of Batanes’ people – such as Abad and his family – spend most of their time in Manila. That would mean that full-time Batanes residents would get P7,500 each, which they could use to start a savings account or a small business. But that would mean no opportunity for anyone there to skim off the island’s pork barrel funds. With the hundreds of millions of pesos of government funds Abad has channeled to his Lilliputian province, it is even running out of projects to be funded by the 2015 pork barrel fund. For instance, P5.5 million was allocated to its Mahatao town for a “project to be determined (sic).”
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 00:17:12 +0000
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