"Is there such a thing as a bribe after the fact?" That question from President Aquino had us scratching our heads. This is the President’s response to a Constitutional question?
The answer, in any case, is another question: Heller?
Bribes come in various forms, are called by various names. "Deal", "Reward," "COD", "Pang-kape," etc. As far back and even earlier than Benigno Aquino III's time in Congress, it's also been called "SOP". Timing has nothing to do with it. Intent does.
In February 2012, at the height of the impeachment trial of then-Chief Justice Renato Corona, the top magistrate’s defense counsel said a "bribe" to senators came by way of a promise to be paid out after the fact of an actual conviction. Lawyer Jose Roy III was cited in contempt by the senators. One and a half years later, those who voted to convict Corona finally acknowledge that, well, actually, they did ultimately accept an additional P100 million each in pork barrel funds. Not by way of a bribe, they insist, but on the back of a pump-priming initiative by the Aquino administration - a new and previously unknown animal called the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).
Team PNoy, particularly Malacañang and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), has three points to stress about DAP:
- It's not a bribe. (See above.)
- It was necessary, if not a stroke of genius. Red-tape’s a bitch, and funds were simply not being disbursed fast enough to steer the economy clear of a global recession.
- It worked!
- See above.
- Releases and disbursements were/are precisely the realm of the executive, and in particular the DBM to which the birth of DAP is being credited. It’s worth remembering that the Achilles heel of the Aquino administration from 2010 to 2012 had always been its (in)capacity to let the funds flow to the extremities of this nation. Credit or blame an obsession-compulsion for cleanliness, or on any reality of governance, but the fact is that the government was missing its own targets for spending. And here's the thing: the limits on spending were self-imposed, the invoked injuries self-inflicted. To then therefore invoke your own unwillingness or inability to move, as license to create what in essence is another layer of pork barrel, is like the MMDA straitjacketing itself from finding any solution to traffic, only so the agency can justify express lanes for its officials.
- Who cares if DAP "worked"? It's unconstitutional.
What is the point in citing performance? It is fascist, and it is neither here nor there. Take it out of the picture and we are left with the fundamental questions of what our leaders should and should not do, what they can and cannot do.
In a republican democracy, first off, they cannot presume that any one person or entity or branch of government can fix the whole. The whole principle of checks-and-balance functions on the ebbs, will, limits, and imperfection of each chartered house. To have any delusion to the contrary is to fall in love with your own reflection in the water.
The pork barrel system, all the corruption, the entire culture of Philippine patronage politics - none of these can be solved by any one branch of government, especially one sounding more self-righteous than the other.
President Aquino, his approval ratings impervious to all criticism, can afford to take the flak. Through his spokesmen, he says he authorized all DAP releases in 2012. PNoy has been consistent with drawing fire for his underlings. Which would be heroic, were it not for another penchant to then duck and hide behind Gloria Arroyo.
After trying to get Abad out of the mess he created, the President, off tangent, told the Brotherhood of Christian Businessmen and Professionals (BCBP) that his predecessor must have played around with no less than P637 billion in all the years that her administration worked on reenacted budgets. Reenacted GAAs result in huge funds floating about – particularly from reenacted line items for projects already completed. This is precisely why, President Aquino told his BCBP audience Wednesday, one of the key reforms he pursued was ensuring a stop to the practice.
But what about his setup with DAP? The Executive had deliberately impounded billions of pesos previously approved by Congress under the General Appropriations Act. After which the Aquino government decided, on its own and without consent of the Congress, to reactivate the same, no longer as GAA but as DAP.
Even NGOs – the legitimate ones – can tell you: You cannot scrimp on approved projects so you can bank the difference as unrestricted funds next year, for projects or programs, staff expenses or whatever you wish to cover.
Which only now finally gets us to how the DAP ultimately behaves. As pork. As another incarnation of the same corrupted system that Aquino so easily decries under – and completely attributes to – Arroyo. Only this time, it is more grotesque, having been conjured from flawed accounting principles, and worst yet, without the Constitutional cover at least having been passed and approved by the House of Representatives. Even PDAF has history and is not as dubious. DAP? Not even the Senators knew where the windfall was coming from.
All this talk of how the DAP can be accounted for, and how its impact can be measured, misses the point. The Aquino administration is exasperated with its attempts to explain, to the point of crying that the media and public are being "distracted" from Janet Napoles and all those senators and congressmen who pocketed the PDAF.
Are we?
Or is it the Aquino Administration that is distracting us from the real and larger issue?
DAP is pork. DAP is unconstitutional. DAP was used to reward senators standing by the administration at a crucial time. President Aquino cannot defend its creation and use and still maintain that he stands for a new and better way.
There is only one way for a republican democracy, and that is to hew to the Constitution. Because upon it we place our fate and future in the leadership of everyone in the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary. Off it, we trust no one.
Pork barrels can do good. Pork barrels can be bad. Either way, pork barrels are symptomatic of two things: a healthy to risky distrust of systems and plans, and then the hubris of those who arrogate unto themselves control of the funds. Every defense of the pork barrel is premised on the argument that because systems and plans can be slow or can fail, one of us, more than the other, can be trusted to break the cycles of inefficiency, inefficacy, and even corruption. Between Congress that wields the power of the purse, and the Executive that holds sway over all plans and releases, there is a battle of self-importance that corrupts the weak and deludes even the good. And the people? They are held hostage between that corruption and that delusion, both of which ultimately argue: Do we have any other choice?
Do we?
At midnight of October 1, the world's lone superpower shut down its government. Because the US Congress and the White House could not get their act together on how best to fix their public spending, a Constitutionally mandated deadline brought them to a clear and spelled out consequence. Because the American people, and the most bitter of their politicians, respect their Constitution, everyone now pays the price for the failure of politics.
They will find a way out of the shutdown, as they did 17 years ago, and they will do so without any side emerging as the savior of everybody else. Equal as heroes and equal as assholes, America’s leaders will still pay the price for their brinkmanship.
But crucially, they will have been prevented by a nearly 240-year-old piece of paper from behaving or believing themselves as better, holier than any other.
And then they will have proven that the choice is not between functioning and stopping in our tracks. The choice is between sticking to one set of rules or letting all hell break loose. Always the choice is between empowering the republic and the people, or empowering one or a few.
To reduce the anger of the past few months to Napoles and all those implicated in the PDAF scam – that is deluded, and that is distracted. DAP reminds that patronage politics is harder to uproot than we all imagined. Certainly it will take more than one man.
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