By Nestor Mata
Malaya
Malaya
‘President Aquino and his allies in Congress have replaced the pork barrel system with a new scheme by which they can grab a share of the people’s money.’
ALL attempts by President Noynoy Aquino, together with his political, palace subalterns and propagandists, to divert public anger over the pork barrel scandal away from him and his allies in Congress have failed.
The protest marches and prayer vigils continue unabated against the scandalous misuse of the pork barrel budgetary allocations for senators and congressmen under the Priority Assistance Development Fund (PADF) and the President’s own “lump sums”, but also of a new mechanism for plunder in which he and his officials will have full control of the pork barrel funds under another name. That is, as minority members of congress and anti-pork barrel demonstrators so sarcastically put it, “same dog, different collar”!
The new scheme, as conceived by Aquino’s congressional allies, will officially remove the discretion of lawmakers over the PADF or pork barrel funds under the proposed P2.268-trillion national budget for 2014. In effect, lawmakers will be stripped of control of how their allocations for their districts will be spent, but it will empower instead the Executive Department, Cabinet secretaries and heads of line agencies to disburse the funds. And it will also ban non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from soliciting pork barrel funds.
In other words, under the scheme, the lawmakers will just be limited to making recommendations for the funding of projects in their districts, and the President and his executive and Cabinet officials and political allies in Congress will now convert their official authority into a means to grab a share of the people’s money.
Since they have not given a new name to replace PDAF, some netzers have suggested that it be re-named the “Benigno Aquino Development Assistance Fund (BADAF)” or “BSA’s Awesome Budget for Outstanding Allies of the Year (BABOY)” or “PNoy’s Allowance and Treasury Allocation (PATA”) or “President’s Overt Revenue Kickback (PORK)” or “PNoy’s Initiative for Good Government CountrYwide (PIGGY)”.
And now, the protest movement has expanded from scrapping the pork barrel to the prosecution of the plunderers, to budgetary reforms, to fighting the corruption that has penetrated the core of the political elite in Aquino’s administration.
Before the pork scandal exploded, as one discerning media pundit noted, the Aquino administration had been able to mask its own corruption by attacking the corruption of past administrations. In reality, it did not abolish the corrupt practices of its predecessors, but merely extended and improved upon them while denouncing their past perpetrators.
The angry public has also found out, other than the pork barrel scandal, that other kinds of corruption have proliferated during Aquino’s three years, one month and 12 days in the presidency. These are financial corruption, political corruption, and electoral corruption.
Financial corruption consists of money being pocketed for personal gain, from smuggling to jueteng to alleged extortion attempt by presidential kith and kin and friends; political corruption in money allegedly misused to destroy the independence of co-equal constitutional branches of government, such as increasing allied congressmen’s pork barrel annually from P10 billion in 2010 to P24 billion in 2011, 2012 and 2013, and P27 billion in the 2014 national budget; and electoral corruption in money allegedly used to fix the 2010 and 2013 elections.
The EDSA protesters, some of them are known supporters of the Aquino administration, are aghast with the rising corruption growth in President Aquino’s government, such as the way he used his pork barrel to persuade members of Congress to impeach and remove Chief Justice Renato Corona, to ram through the anti-Catholic Reproductive Health Law, and the revelation of his vaunted “kung walang corrupt mahirap” mantra as nothing but pure propaganda.
Oh yes, the protesters were amused by the “I don’t remember her” denials of Aquino his political confreres that they didn’t know Janet Lim-Napoles, alleged “brains” behind the multi-billion pork barrel scam. But the fuming
people vividly remembered that time weeks ago when she surrendered in the middle of the night to no less than Aquino himself inside Malacañang, and he later escorted her late that night to the PNP headquarters in Quezon City, and he even made sure that she would be comfortable in her detention quarters.
people vividly remembered that time weeks ago when she surrendered in the middle of the night to no less than Aquino himself inside Malacañang, and he later escorted her late that night to the PNP headquarters in Quezon City, and he even made sure that she would be comfortable in her detention quarters.
The handwriting on the wall is becoming clear, that is, countless Filipinos have inherent or instinctive objection to corruption in government, that at heart they now expect or demand rigid honesty in public officials and political party leaders.
Alas, President Noynoy Aquino seems mindless of what this means to him!
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