By NESTOR MATA
MALAYA
MALAYA
‘President Aquino’s recent actions and inactions suggest a kind of character that’s deeply flawed, revealing utter lack of leadership in times of crucial crises.’
PRESIDENT Noynoy Aquino was nowhere to be found in the wake of the deadly storm “Maring” that devastated, killed hundreds of people, and flooded Metro Manila and neighboring provinces. He was seen only days later, distributing relief goods to a small group of persons in nearby Cavite, as shown in propaganda photo-ops which appeared in front pages of newspapers, instead of making sure that immediate assistance was given to an estimated one million people rendered homeless and hungry and shivering from lack of food, water and clothes.
Then Aquino was silent when news broke out about scandals in his own administration involving his very close relatives, friends and officials in the reported $30 million extortion attempt on the Czech company Inekon proposing to supply new trains and refurnishing old fleet of the 14-year-old MRT3, the multi-million peso smuggling at the Bureau of Customs, and innumerable other cases of graft and corruption and ineptness and inefficiency by his public officials.
All this and more actions and inactions of Aquino suggest a kind of character that’s so deeply flawed, clearly revealing that he is unfit to rule a country now divided by partisan politics and a government sullied by corruption and plunder which have destroyed the core of public service after just three years in office.
“While there are very few public officials and government institutions remain unsullied and without reproach,” a media pundit observed, “men and women who never expected much from government now feel totally betrayed and violated” by the many scandals and malpractices inside Aquino’s administration and in Congress.
One such scandal, involving Aquino’s Executive Department and both houses of Congress under his control, is the misuse of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), otherwise known derisively as the “Pork Barrel”, amounting to over P10-billion of the people’s money.
True, an investigation of the scandalous affair has been conducted by the Department of Justice and its National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), centering on one Janet Lim Napoles, who’s suspected to have siphoned billions in “Pork Barrel” funds to ghost NGOs, reportedly in collusion with certain executive department officials and lawmakers. Alas, there is an undeniable effort to limit the coverage of the scandal to the years of the past Arroyo administration, and not the Aquino administration, particularly those involved in implementation of the PDAF programs, and to downgrade the accountability to members of Congress alone, particularly those who are not considered its political allies.
Indeed, it’s turning out that the cancer of corruption has not spared the halls of power in Malacañang. According to independent lawmakers, still untainted by the virus, the Palace along the stinking Pasig River has failed to reveal not only Aquino’s pork barrel disbursements ever since he came to power in 2010 to this day, but also its handling of all lump sum items in the National Budget for 2013 alone. These amounted to over P755 billion and, if we include automatic debt service of over P449 billion, a total of P1.204 trillion.
Other Palace disbursements, which remain unaccounted and unexamined, they say, were P117 billion in un-programmed funds, hundreds of billions in Special Purpose Funds, including P44 billion in subsidy to government-owned corporations, P98 billion in pension and gratuity funds, P69 billion in miscellaneous personnel benefits fund, P56 billion in conditional cash transfer, billions in special accounts such as the Malampaya fund and others.
More, they asked, how come Aquino, who controls at least 50 percent of the National Budget, has not been made to account for over trillion pesos in his hands? When he was a congressman for nine years he received over P75 million in “pork barrel” funds, P600 million as a senator for three years, and over P74.8 billion a year as president in his first three years, one month and 27 days ago, not to mention another P74.4 billion for his remaining three years in office until 2016.These public funds have not been accounted for up to now.
And more questions, how much “pork” did Aquino award to each lawmaker who willingly helped him in the impeachment trial of then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Renato Corona? And how much “pork” did he award them to railroad the controversial RH Law? All of this people’s money remains unaudited to this day.
This is the man who, with his vaunted political slogan of “Kung walang corrupt. Walang mahirap”, deluded millions of Filipinos who installed him at the nation’s helm of power until 2016. And, despite his most unequivocal defense of the highly controversial “Pork Barrel” funds, those very same people are now crying out to high heavens: “Scrap the Pork”! “Jail the scalawags, the crooks and the corrupt in your government”!
Indeed, all the scandalous waste of the people’s money, not to mention his dangerous foreign policy blunders vis-à-vis diplomatic relations as well as territorial dispute in the South China Sea with hegemonic China, clearly shows the complete inability, ineptitude, incapacity of President Aquino to govern the country well.
In any other country, such despicable state of affairs, including the covering up of irregularities by his executive officials and allies in Congress, would have been enough to cause his ignominious fall from power!
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President Aquino last weekend suddenly announced the abolition of the PDAF, otherwise called “Pork Barrel” fund, reversing his original stand in favor of it, and replacing it with “a new mechanism” or line item budgetary system, but he didn’t give it an official name.
Well, tongue in cheek, some of Aquino’s critics have suggested the renaming of the PDAF to “Benigno Aquino Development Assistance Fund” or “BADAF”!
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Quote of the Day: “A true leader must know, must know that he knows, and must be able to make it abundantly clear to the people and those around him that he knows!” – Anonymous Political Commenter
Thought of the day: “Leadership and learning are in dispensable to each other.” – John F. Kennedy
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