On the Pork barrel

By ROD P. KAPUNAN facebook post

READ THIS: Pork barrel has practically transposed the President to virtual dictator without him having to use his emergency power. Thus, if national discipline was branded as a form of dictatorship, bribery today is their way to proliferate our gutter version of democracy. Buy them all! As such nobody now talks of the goal to achieve national development. Rather, such sloganeering is treated as beatitudes only a sick mind would think of doing his share for this nation. 

All levels in the executive and legislative branches of government have their version of the pork barrel. The corrupt practice of pork barrel that Congress initiated is now observed among Provincial Boards, City and Municipal Councils, down to the Barangay Council. 

Not to be left out, the counterpart version of the President’s pork barrel is called discretionary fund exemplified by the current controversy about the DAP. With President Aquino leading with a hefty P1 trillion pork barrel, that channel of corruption goes all the way from the Vice President, Governors and their Vice Governor, City Mayors and their Vice Mayor, Municipal Mayors and their Vice Mayor, to the Barangay Chairmen and their Vice Chairman. 

On the average 30 to 50 percent of our revenues, both national and local, are dissipated through systematic corruption and looting of government funds. Among our local officials, corruption is most evident for often they submit ghost projects as their accomplishments.
Even the private sector and the Church participate in the looting of government funds.

 Classic was the CODE-NGO sale of the government issued Peace Bonds. CODE- NGO is a Church-supported NGO that transacted the anomalous sale of government bonds amounting to P10 billion and paid for to the tune of P34 billion by this pretending to be honest government. Leading corporations in this country have their own foundations they use to avoid paying the exact amount of taxes and as their tax shelter. 

Nothing happened despite public outcry with the Church colluding with a private sector bank in forcing our people to bleed just to pay the huge interest exacted by them. The CODE-NGO and its officers collected in advance their commission of P1.4 billion while the government through taxes religiously paid the interest that as said reached more than P34 billion in ten years. 

The mere fact that payment was continued by this pretending to be honest government until it was fully paid last year, condemned as an anomalous transaction by the usurping lady now in jail and now rewarded by an P8 million gift from the discretionary funds of the President, is telling that the Arroyo and the Aquino governments are one and the same.
As one would say, from Mrs. Aquino to Mr. Aquino, all our officials have practically been corrupted through bribery given another name that in the end our people today suffer from mental illness called degenerative political consciousness. What we have is not a system of to each his own, but one of political cannibalism, a political vice so serious for us to think twice on whether or not to cling on to our heathen concepts freedom and democracy.