A RESEARCH PAPER
PORK BARREL: TO BE ABOLISHED OR NOT

OUTLINE
Thesis : The recent scandal of government officials allegedly channelling their pork barrel funds to fake non-governmental organizations with nothing but ghost projects to show for has yet again raised the issue of abolishing the pork barrel.

I. Introduction to Pork Barrel
A. Definition of Terms
B. PDAF in the Philippines
C. Importance of PDAF

II. PDAF scam
A. People involved B. Reactions and Protests

III. Abolishment of Pork Barrel A. Benefits B. Consequences C. Alternatives D. Opinions about the issue E. What the government will do after abolishing the Pork Barrel

IV. Conclusion
V. Recommendation
I. Introduction to Pork Barrel A cure, a treat, an alliance, a devastation or just a play. What do we really know about that so called Pork Barrel?

A. Definition of Terms
The Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) is a discretionary fund in the Philippines available to members of Congress. Originally established as the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF) in 1990, it is designed to allow legislators to fund small-scale infrastructure or community projects which fell outside the scope of the national infrastructure program, which was often restricted to large infrastructure items (Nograles and Lagman ).
The PDAF is commonly called the "pork barrel", and has been the subject of much public criticism following exposés on abuses perpetuated by members of Congress on use of the fund in 1996 and 2013. According to the Random House Dictionary, Pork barrel is the “government appropriation, bill, or policy that supplies funds for local improvements designed to ingratiate legislators with their constituents”. Wikipedia defines pork barrel politics as “spending which is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes”.
In the popular 1863 story "The Children of the Public", Edward Everett Hale used the term pork barrel as a homely metaphor for any form of public spending to the citizenry. After the American Civil War, however, the term came to be used in a derogatory sense. By the 1870s, references to "pork" were common in Congress, and the term was further popularized by a 1919 article by Chester Collins Maxey in the National Municipal Review, which reported on certain legislative acts known to members of Congress as "pork barrel bills". He claimed that the phrase originated in a pre-Civil War practice of giving slaves a barrel of salt pork as a reward and requiring them to compete among themselves to get their share of the handout (691). More generally, a barrel of salt pork was a common larder item in 19th century households, and could be used as a measure of the family's financial well-being. For example, in his 1845 novel The Chainbearer, James Fenimore Cooper wrote, "I hold a family to be in a desperate way, when the mother can see the bottom of the pork barrel."
Typically, "pork" involves funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers. Public works projects, certain national defense spending projects, and agricultural subsidies are the most commonly cited examples.
Citizens Against Government Waste outlines seven criteria by which spending can be classified as "pork": 1. Requested by only one chamber of Congress 2. Not specifically authorized 3. Not competitively awarded 4. Not requested by the President 5. Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding 6. Not the subject of Congressional hearings 7. Serves only a local or special interest.
In other countries, the practice is often called patronage, but this word does not always imply corrupt or undesirable conduct.

B. PDAF in the Philippines
The pork barrel funds account for a little over 1 percent of the national budget. Last year, it has a funding of nearly P25 billion. PHP 200 million and PHP 70 million are allocated a year for each senator and member of the House of Representatives, respectively.
Priority budgets and programs may be in the form of “hard” projects or infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, school buildings, and the like. These may also be in the form of “soft projects” or non-infrastructure projects like scholarships and livelihood programs.
For representatives, funds are split into PHP 30 million each of the representative's pork barrel for “soft programs” and PHP 40 million for “hard programs”. For senators, their pork barrel is evenly split in half for “soft” and “hard” projects.
Legislators refer to a menu of “hard” and “soft” projects which can be funded using congressional allocations to decide on what projects to identify for their constituents. It is contained in the special provisions of the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA) (Guidaben).
Agatha Guidaben, a GMA News Researcher wrote that legislators can pick from the following projects: * Education (Scholarships) * Health (Financial assistance to indigent patients, purchase of medical equipment) * Livelihood/ social services * Rural electrification * Water supply (Construction of water system, installation of pipes/pumps/tanks) * Financial assistance (For specific programs and projects of Local Government Units (LGUs)) * Public works (Roads, bridges, flood control, school buildings, hospitals, health facilities, public markets, multi-purpose buildings and pavements) * Irrigation * Peace and order (Purchase of firetrucks and firefighting equipment, patrol vehicles, prisoners’ vans, multicabs, police patrol equipment, construction/repair of fire stations, police stations, jails) * Housing * Forest management * Arts and culture
As these requests cannot be accomodated at the same time, a staff member of each legislator compiles requests by his or her constituents and the office services them according to the time these were submitted to them and the priority.
The summary of PDAF releases for the Fiscal Year 2013 according to Department of Budget and Management amounted to PHP 11,581,550,888. PHP 7,996,663,888 was used by District Representatives, PHP 1,907,600,000 by Partylist Representatives and PHP 1,677,287,000 by the Upper House.

The Process: 1. A Senator or Representative makes a request for the release of his or her allocation which is accompanied with a project list. Projects are drawn from a menu specified in the annual budget law. 2. The request is sent to the Senate finance committee or the House appropriations committee. It is then endorsed by the committee chairman to the Senate president or the Speaker, who forwards it to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). 3. The DBM, which verifies if the project list conforms to the menu in the budget law, releases the funds to the implementing agency which is identified by the lawmaker. 4. The lawmaker, who is furnished a copy of the release document known as the special allotment release order (SARO), is not supposed to meddle in project implementation. Instead, he or she chooses non-government organizations (NGOs) which will receive the lawmaker's funds and implement his or her projects. The transfer is covered by a memorandum of agreement signed among the lawmakers, their implementing agencies and their chosen NGOs. 5. A post-project implementation examination will be conducted by auditors.

C. Importance of PDAF
The PDAF is a representation of an effective leadership of a people’s representative if the districts’ needs for bridges or roads are meet due to the PDAF or initiative of the Congressman. If the social benefit is higher on the benefit of congressional project such as providing scholarship to students for training or formal education belonging to a poor family but wanted to learn, the social and personal benefit will be higher than the social cost as these individuals will contribute productively in the society – thus, reducing the risk of potential criminals and society’s menace.
Also, the PDAF brings the government into the small units in the community who were away from the short but caring arms of the State. The PDAF supports the small important projects that will directly enjoyed by the district constituents hence, providing an opportunity for democratic and productive practices towards economic development.

II. PDAF scam
The Priority Development Assistance Fund scam, is a political scandal involving the alleged misuse by several members of the Congress of the Philippines of their pork barrels. Recently, it was estimated that the Philippine government was defrauded of some ₱10 billion in the course of the scam. This scam has provoked public outrage, with calls being made on the Internet for popular protests to demand the abolition of the PDAF.

A. People involved The scam was first exposed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on July 12, 2013, with the six-part exposé of the Inquirer on the scam pointing to businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles as the scam's mastermind. The PDAF scam involved the funding of "ghost projects" that were funded using the PDAF funds of participating lawmakers. These projects were in turn "implemented" through Napoles' companies, with the projects producing no tangible output. According to testimony provided by Benhur Luy's brother, Arthur, funds would be processed through fake foundations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) established under the wing of the JLN Group of Companies, the holding company of Janet Lim-Napoles, with Napoles' employees—even a nanny—named as incorporators or directors.
Each foundation or NGO served as an official recipient of a particular legislator's PDAF funds, and each organization had a number of bank accounts where PDAF funds would be deposited for the implementation of these projects.Every recipient agency participating in the scam had employees or officials that maintained contact with Napoles, allowing for the smooth processing of transactions and the expedient release of PDAF funds to her organizations.
In the initial report published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 28 members of Congress (five senators and 23 representatives) were named as participants in the PDAF scam. Twelve of these legislators were identified by the newspaper, and close to ₱3 billion in PDAF funds coming from these legislators alone were exposed to the scam.

B. Reactions and Protests * Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila – during a press conference at the University of Santo Tomas, Cardinal Tagle described the scandal as part of an "intricate web of corruption", and said that it is right that the issue be investigated. He added that those involved in the scam have "lost touch with the poor" and should visit a community of informal settlers to understand the issues poor Filipinos face on a daily basis. "We have heard many other big scandals in the past but these were buried and forgotten when a new issue came up", the cardinal added.

* Renato Reyes Jr., Secretary-General of BAYAN coalition – Reyes described the scandal as a "bigger test for the Department of Justice". He also said that the coalition remains doubtful if those involve in the alleged scam will be held liable, including those perceived to be allied with the Aquino administration. Reyes also accused the House of Representatives and Senate for covering up the scam and refusing to open an investigation. BAYAN also re-iterated its call for the complete abolition of the PDAF.

On August 26, 2013, thousands of people came to Luneta Park in a protest against the pork barrel scheme dubbed the "Million People March". After this, a prayer vigil dubbed "EDSA Tayo" was set for September 11 at the EDSA Shrine. About 500-700 people attended the vigil. Two days later another protest was held at Luneta, where according to police estimates, about 3000 entered. The organizers stated that another rally dubbed "Level Up" were scheduled last September 21 (with a noise barrage held before the event), and another "Million People March" protest were held last December.

III. Abolishment of Pork Barrel

A. Benefits According to a Philippine Daily Inquirer article wrote by Juan Diaz, putting a stop to the pork barrel will achieve the following benefits:

1. President Aquino will thereby show that he means business with his “daang matuwid” policy of governance. 2. Candidates for Congress will henceforth come from those motivated solely by the desire to serve the country, with no intention of enriching themselves in office. Then and only then will those who believe themselves to be capable of being legislators, without having to go through crash courses to function as such, will aspire to become members of Congress. 3. Candidates for Congress will henceforth limit their vote-buying and other election expenses as the use of the pork barrel to recover those expenses will be a thing of the past. This will result in cleaner elections in the future, and the electoral process will thereby be improved. | 4. The intended end-beneficiaries of the pork barrel can receive the benefits directly from the executive without feeling obliged to “pay back” politicians in their desire to perpetuate themselves and their relatives in office. 5. The incumbent legislators who will be disappointed or prejudiced by the abolition of the pork barrel will have learned the lesson that all public officials need to internalize once and for all that public office is, in fact, a public trust.

B. Consequences The reality is, while many of our leaders have abused and misused it, there are also many Filipinos who continue to benefit from it. There are tens of thousands of financially-disadvantaged college students who receive financial aid or scholarships from their Congressman or Senator all over the country that will be facing a dilemma if and when the President decides to finally abolish the pork barrel. The challenge now is to ensure that those who continue to benefit from it will not be adversely affected if and when the pork barrel is scrapped and that they will still be able to continue to go to school or receive medical assistance.
In the article “The falling out of what’s left of our trust”, Aubrey Bahala wrote the three reservations for the overall abolition of PDAF: 1. Abolition of the existing system of how PDAF is disbursed to lawmakers will not guarantee the budding of another ‘reform/revised/strengthen’ system.

2. Those funds are heavily needed by local governments in different parts of the country and channeling it to the national government, or worse, dissolving it, would not only close doors for further development but will also foster more chances for skewed development. 3. The system for the release and expenditure of the funds needs intensive review and adjustment, with huge considerations on how people could monitor the funds allocated to their senators & district representatives. Penalties could be imposed for failure to abide by the set rules. Transparency & accountability as good governance tools can be incorporated in the monitoring of the funds, especially by CSOs at the local level.

C. Alternatives Today there is an urgent need to think about, debate over, and push for, a concrete set of alternatives that will challenge the fundamental assumptions underpinning the Pork Barrel System and public spending in general. Participatory budgeting can be one of those solutions, in line with our other calls for Freedom of Information (FOI) and electoral reforms. The National Budget is a concrete expression of a government’s priorities – as well as the diverse array of interests that go into decision-making over the spending of our taxes. For many, the fact that a sizeable amount of public funds still go to line the pockets of a handful of politicians, through the completely legal channels of the budgetary process, is proof of just how entrenched corruption has become, even after decades of wrangling over the Pork Barrel System. Where it has been put into practice, PB has challenged old ways of doing things, called into question dominant structures of power, redistributed wealth and political influence, engaged more people in the democratic process, and given impetus to social movements demanding greater transparency and institutional reform.

D. Opinions about the issue The 'Abolition’ of pork gets mixed reactions and local economists remained split on whether or not to retain it. Economists like Philippine Economic Society (PES) President Alvin Ang believe the PDAF should be abolished mainly because the execution of projects is not part of the functions of the legislative department. “[The] legislative and executive works have different functions. [The] PDAF contradicts that. It’s better to leave projects for [the] Executive. [The] PDAF, until abolished, should be used for productivity improvement of the agriculture sector, social protection and infrastructure support,” (Ang).
University of the Philippines economist Ernesto Pernia also supports the abolition of the PDAF. He said the government could instead transfer the funds to the care of executives of local government units (LGUs), who “know better” where the funds can be used. But, Pernia said, ideally, the funds should be directed to primary needs, such as education, health and agriculture. “The funds can still be allocated for the use of LGU executives. They know better where the funds are needed in their district, compared to congressmen,” (Pernia).
University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance Prof. J. Prospero de Vera III said the abolition of the PDAF “will have a disastrous effect on many local communities where a legislator’s pork barrel project is often the only capital investment in the area.”
On the other hand, University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) School of Economics Vice Dean Cid Terosa said the PDAF is still needed, particularly for projects that would “redound to the common good.”If the PDAF were used for the common good, Terosa said, this could lead to multiplier effects that would make it easier for the Philippines to eradicate poverty and hunger.
“Yes we need the PDAF to pursue projects that would redound to the common good but the common good should not be identified by the politicians themselves but by the people in general. It should be a PDAF by the people and for the people. Not a PDAF by and for politicians,” (Terosa).
“When used for the common good, the PDAF would yield huge output, income, and employment multiplier effects that can be sustained over the lifetime of politicians and the long run,” he added.Terosa added that the “monopolistic control” of the PDAF should be removed and that accountability in the use of the funds should be stressed. He expressed support for the President’s opinion that the PDAF should be overhauled and also subscribes to the recommendation of Vice President Jejomar Binay to conduct a full accounting of the use of the PDAF in the current and past administration.
“We must remove the monopolistic control, unbridled discretionary power and weak accountability of politicians and their minions. I agree in principle with the President and Vice President. I hope they have the will to pursue the principles that they are fighting for,” (Terosa).

E. What the government will do after abolishing the Pork Barrel President Benigno Aquino III has announced the abolition of legislators' pork barrel, which will be replaced by a new system that will go through the national budgetary process.Under the new system, lawmakers may only identify initiatives that can benefit their respective jurisdictions, which will be listed as line items under the national budget if approved.
The items will come from a specific menu of qualified projects, excluding consumable “soft” projects–including fertilizers and seeds, medicine, medical kits, sports fests and training materials–which are repeatedly prone to misuse and fund leakage.These line items will no longer be disbursed to non-government organizations and certain government-owned and controlled corporations. Short-term infrastructure projects such as dredging and desilting activities will also be prohibited.
Through the government's Official Gazette, the Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office has released an infographic regarding the new system:

IV. Conclusion

The Philippines is once again put into a clash as a recent dilemma boomed the whole realm and started bombarding it with diverse opinions regarding the alleged Pork Barrel Scam. The pork barrel scam has opened many eyes to the reality of corruption which has resulted to taxpayers demanding explanations from the government. In light of the recent scam, arguments float up from the various sectors from the government as well as its constituents. Many institutions and individuals hunger for its abolition to bring corruption into a halt.Many people think that abolishing the pork barrel system outright is a much better option than merely reforming the system. The controversy on the pork barrel scam sheds light on the corrupt officials, ergo, many say, it should be abolished. But with all the fuss over the pork barrel scam, there are still a number of Pinoys who have no idea what it is.
What would happen to the common folk if the pork barrel for the betterment of the nation be abolished? If we do abolish it, where will our taxes go, and what will happen to the people who benefited from it through schools, hospitals, and other projects? If we fight for reform, will we be able to fix the loopholes and create transparency in the pork barrel system, which will give way to good governance? Simply removing the “supply” by abolishing the pork barrel fund will not work, since the demand will continue. Cutting off supply without finding ways to reduce demand in the first place will mean that future leaders and politicians will very likely end up reviving the Pork Barrel system since the pull factors that necessitated its creation will still continue to exist. These are all systemic problems caused by systemic root causes. Every decision must be followed by suggestions but it seems that our honorable lawmakers are busy diverting the minds of the people from the real issues. As such, it is necessary to solve these systemic issues from their roots at the underlying “system level.”

V. Recommendation
What can be done?
The pork barrel allocation of our congressmen/senators is always a high profile issue in the Philippines. Some said that the pork barrel will never be abolished. It will just have a different name but substance wise, it is what it is – pork barrel. The real problem was with the execution and the accountability of it. Better monitoring, control and evaluation of the pork barrels would be enough to lessen corruption. The solution to the pork barrel issue is not abrogation but greater accountability, transparency, and rationality in its utilization. If allocated properly, it ensures benefits to the constituents. Otherwise, it is just an instrument for corruption and perpetuation of political dominance.

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