Pork twist: Illegal parking

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

It used to be just pork barrel. But because the Supreme Court has declared the pork barrel, formally called the Priority Development Assistance Fund, unconstitutional, favored lawmakers are now resorting to what Senator Ping Lacson and Rep. Rolando Andaya Jr. call “parking” of huge amount of funds inserted into the proposed national budget to get around the prohibition.

Parked funds are included in the proposed National Expenditure Program before it is submitted to Congress, as opposed to insertions or amendments made by senators and congressmen to the national budget.
gloria
Lacson, who obviously opened a can of worms when he exposed the existence of pork barrel funds in the proposed general appropriations act, revealed that big amounts of pork are parked in a legislative district of a well-connected congressman.

“Then he/she offers to share portions of that parked pork to other congressmen with very little or no pork allocations with the understanding that the choice of contractor remains with the former,” Lacson said.

By doing so, the favored congressman strengthens his hold over the region while earning huge commissions from the favored contractor. That bodes well for his reelection campaign and the winning chances of politicians favored by the administration in the region.

Imagine that scenario repeated in various regions of the country and you’ll know how tilted in favor of administration candidates the coming midterm elections would be. That’s exactly how then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ensured victory for her and her allies in the 2004 and 2007 elections.

During Arroyo’s time, though, budget officials and lawmakers earmarked funds for supposed agricultural productivity. Thus, they earmarked P728-million fund for the purchase of fertilizers and P2 billion prior to the 2004 elections for the purchase of pigs purportedly for distribution to farmers to increase agricultural productivity. The release raised an uproar, however, when it was discovered that even congressmen in Metro Manila, where it was hard to find a farm or a pigpen, got their share of the agricultural funds.

Just before the 2007 elections, the Arroyo administration was again able to squeeze into the national budget a P3.1-billion fund supposedly to build irrigation canals throughout the country to, again, improve agricultural productivity. It would be interesting to see how many kilometers of irrigation canals were built with the billions of pesos released that year.

I would hasten to say there were probably very few built because until now, our good friend Agriculture Secretary Manny Pinol continues to complain of lack of irrigation for farmlands.

And then probably in preparation for the 2010 elections, Arroyo gave away P2.6 billion to favored senators and congressmen supposedly to build farm-to-market roads in their respective districts. Again, how many kilometers of farm-to-market roads were built? I surmise not even worth half of the amount released.

No wonder Philippine agriculture has remained stagnant for decades. Administrations after administrations allot billions of pesos to improve food production, but most of the money goes to ghost projects and pockets of politicians.

With the ambitious “Build, Build, Build” program the supposed centerpiece agenda of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte, it is not difficult to deduce that pork barrel funds would be hidden in infrastructure projects of various government agencies, notably the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Andaya, who is the most likely to know the ins and outs of pork barrel having been a longtime congressman of Camarines Sur and a budget secretary during the term of Arroyo, recently confirmed this.

Following up on Lacson’s earlier expose, Andaya said a mayor told him that a former Cabinet official who is seeking an elective seat in the coming May elections “parked” at least P300 million in infrastructure projects in the proposed 2019 national budget. He said the unnamed mayor disclosed that the Cabinet member parked the allocation in flood-mitigation projects for the region.

Andaya said the supposed “parking scheme” may eventually explain the huge spike allocated to flood mitigation projects from 2017 to 2018, adding that the budget for flood mitigation projects increased to up to P133 billion compared to the P79 billion worth of funds in 2017.

“Out of the proposed P544.5-billion budget of the DPWH (Department of Public Works and Highways) for 2019, P114.4 billion is for flood control projects. Almost 24 percent,” Andaya said, adding that the DPWH may even be unaware of these insertions. Public Works Secretary Mark Villar was indeed reportedly unaware of the fund.

Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon earlier discovered around P16.18 billion in lump-sum appropriation supposedly for assisting local government units that he said was “parked” in the proposed budget of the Department of the Interior and Local Government. The DILG, during budget deliberations at the Senate last week, however, disowned the fund, claiming no knowledge of how the outlay will be implemented.
So, how many more of these parked pork will be discovered by the Senate? Also, how will the Senate know the truth about reports that a small construction company, CT Leoncio Trading and Construction, whose owner is reportedly connected to Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno has cornered 30 infrastructure projects worth billions of pesos, after Malacanang prohibited him from attending the House investigation on the alleged pork insertions?
The Congress probe on the pork barrel insertions, if not averted, could split the Duterte administration’s supermajority in both houses, especially in the House where the faction of Arroyo and Andaya, on one hand, and that of former Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and former Majority Leader Rudy Farinas, are locking horns on the distribution of the pork barrel funds.

It has become a “circus” and a “royal rumble” indeed, as described by detained Sen. Leila de Lima, over two actions that are both illegal and one and the same – pork barrel and pork parking.

(valabelgas@aol.com)