The Effect of the Proposed Abolition of the Pork Barrel

“MAKIBAKA WAG MAGBABOY!”, a popular scream of the Filipino people rallying in accordance with the proposed abolition of the pork barrel. Many things have been said about abolishing the pork barrel system but something seems omitted. Has anyone suggested another option? An alternative perhaps? The reason why I chose this topic is because it somehow affects all of us. I want to know the reason why some people take PDAF for granted not only the politicians but also those who are pretending to organize projects, etc but instead they use it for their personal gains. Is pork barrel the real root of corruption? These questions are just some of the many subjects that are inclined with the topic. With all the commotion and protest over the pork barrel scam, there are still a number of Filipinos who have no idea what it is. This term paper aims to give information about the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or the pork barrel and some issues and controversies connected with it; thus enlightening the effect of the proposed abolition of the pork barrel.
Generally, pork barrel refers to the appropriation of government spending for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative's district. The usage originated in American English. In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents. Scholars, however, use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations (Wikipedia.org)
In the Philippines, "pork barrel" is the common term that refers to the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) which is defined as a discretionary fund allocated to the members of the Congress - Philippine House of Representatives and the Philippine Senate - to spend as they see fit without going through the normal budgetary process or through the Executive Branch. This pork barrel system was stopped by President Ferdinand Marcos during his dictatorship but was reintroduced by President Corazon Aquino in 1986. It is also known as the congressional pork barrel and is a lump-sum appropriation in the annual General Appropriations Act or the National Budget. It is used to fund priority development programs as well as the projects of the government. The PDAF was originally established as the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF) in 1990 and 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. The program has had different names over the years. To emphasize its focus on the rural areas, it was called Countryside Development Fund (CDF). It was also known as the Congressional Initiative Fund (CIF). When this name became odorous, it was changed to Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).
The pork barrel funds account for a little over 1 percent of the national budget. Commencing 2006, the amount of pork barrel was seventy million pesos for each Representative and two hundred million for each Senator. For representatives, funds are split into thirty million pesos each of the representative's pork barrel for “soft projects” and forty million pesos for “hard projects”. For senators, their pork barrel is evenly split in half for “soft” and “hard” projects. The legislators can use their congressional allocations to decide on what projects they would implement for their constituents. It may be a "hard project” or a "soft project”. Hard projects include buildings, roads, bridges and other infrastructures. On the other hand, soft projects include scholarships and medical assistance or expenses. They may refer to a list of these projects contained in the special provisions of the annual General Appropriations Act (GAA). Legislators can pick from the following projects: education through 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), irrigation, 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), 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. All the enumerated projects are in line with the Ten Millenium Goals for Development of our country.
Due to the never ending demands and needs of our communities, requests of for projects cannot be accommodated at the same time. A staff member of each legislator gathers 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 amounted to 11,581,550,888 pesos. 7,996,663,888 pesos was used by District Representatives, 1,907,600,000 pesos by Partylist Representatives and1,677,287,000 (₱1.6B) by the Upper House.
Many people wonder how the process of pork barrel usage is. First, a Senator or Representative makes a request for the release of his or her allocation which is accompanied with a project list. Second, 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). Third, 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. Fourth, 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. Lastly, a post-project implementation examination will be conducted by auditors.
On its face, the pork barrel system appears to be a democratic way of allocating government resources. Inherited from the United States, this system is supposed to allocate funds equally to every congressional district to be used for the residents’ most urgent and vital needs. And who know the needs of these congressional communities better than the people they elected to represent them? It is the legislators, our leaders. The main job of legislators is to enact and ratify laws for the common good, and not to build roads, school houses and medical clinics, or feed orphans, grant scholarships, or distribute fertilizers. But they can serve their constituents better by directing government resources to the needs of the community people.
Decades have passed; many attempts and efforts have been made to deodorize the pork barrel. For instance, it is required by law that before implementation of pork funds by non-government organizations (NGOs), there should be public bidding. However, in the actual implementation, these procedures were circumvented or ignored. No checking of NGOs was made, no public bidding held and no bonds required. After a recent Senate committee hearing, Snator Francis “Chiz” Escudero exasperatingly blurted out that the PDAF was riddled with “ghost deliveries, fake receipts, NGOs that you can’t locate, and nonexistent suppliers.” The net result: The pork barrel, in the billion pesos, rolled into private pockets.
As earlier stated, the fund is a lump-sum allocation of the appropriations act, but with the full discretion of the legislator on the amount, is an inviting scene for corruption. According to an author (Parreno,1998), he described in a report for the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism on the rates that a Congressman will be receiving as a cuts, kickbacks, commissions, rebates and discounts are robbery done on the very poor. The report mentioned that the contractors have to provide 30-50% discount or rebates to a legislator for granting the contract. This will lead into reducing by 20% the cement on a road project making it substandard – the poor thus paying the high cost.
In the course of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration, the pork barrel became the biggest source of corruption among the lawmakers. Kickbacks or bribes were common and became syndicated using pre-identified project implementers including government agencies, contractors and fake non-profit corporations as well as the government’s Commission on Audit. In August 2013, public outrage over the 10 billion pesos Priority Development Assistance Fund scam, involving Janet Lim Napoles and numerous Senators and House Representatives, led to widespread calls for the abolition of the pork barrel system. This also included the pork barrel funds of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III that amounted to several billions of pesos.
The PDAF has proven to be very popular, with numerous calls for its abolition. The PDAF scam, also known as the pork barrel scam, is a political scandal involving the alleged misuse by several members of the Congress and the Senate of their PDAF, a lump-sum discretionary fund granted to each member of Congress and Senate for speeding up priority development projects of the government, mostly on local level. The scam was first exposed in the Philippine Daily Inquirer in July 12, 2013, with the six part expose’ of the Inquirer on the scam printing to businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles as the scam’s mastermind after Benhur K. Luy, her second cousin and former personal assistant, was rescued by agents of the National Bureau of Investigation on March 22, 2013, four months after he was detained by Napoles at her unit at the Pacific Plaza Towers in Fort Bonifacio. Initially centering on Napoles’ involvement in 2004 Fertilizer Fund scam, the government’s investigation on Luy’s testimony has since expanded to cover Napoles’ involvement in a wider scam involving the misuse of PDAF funds from 2003 to 2013.
It was estimated that the Philippine government was defrauded of some 10 billion pesos in the course of the scam, having been diverted to Napoles, participating members of Congress and other government officials. Aside from the PDAF and the fertilizer fund maintained by the Department of Agriculture, around 900 million pesos in royalties earned from the Malampaya gas field were also lost to the scam. The scam has provoked public outrage, with calls being made on the Internet for popular protests to demand the abolition of the PDAF, and the order for Napoles’ arrest sparking serious discussion online.
And so, President Benigno Aquino III grasped the extent to which the PDAF or pork barrel rocked the Filipino people and drafted the abolishment of corruption-tainted PDAF on the following grounds: 1) that pork barrel scam is “shocking and scandalous”; 2) pork barrel was treated by legislators as their own private fund; 3) pork barrel benefitted greedy individuals; 4) pork barrel scam scandalized the whole government system; 5) to stop pork barrel or PDAF system for abuse; 6) due to people’s outrage; 7) in keeping the mandate of his true bosses, the Filipino; and 8) he is the “listening President”.
What will happen to us now if there’s abolition of the pork barrel? What lies ahead of us? Or shall I say there will be “good pork” versus the “bad pork” issue? I had listed so many good effects if pork barrel will be abolished because it’s “bad pork”: 1) There will be decreased breeding grounds for cronyism or fostering of political patronage since pork barrel allocation will no longer be the basis for the relationship between a legislator and the sitting President. The president will no longer have an opportunity to give and allocate pork barrel fund to those of his political allies if it’s abolished. 2) Non-government organizations (NGOs), people’s organizations (Pos) and civil society organizations (CSOs) “insertion” of their own favorite projects, their own “pork” in the budget will no longer exist too. 3) There will be new process to make sure each district and sector gets a fair share of the budget for projects, while being more transparent and less prone to abuse. As the National Budget is being prepared and legislated, legislators already propose specific projects to be implemented only for their specific districts or sectors. These will be included in the proposed budget as specific line-item budgets, in place of the lump-sum pork barrel. 4) There will be weakened chances of incumbents for re-election since they don’t have the pork barrel fund to support them financially during election campaigns and vote buying. 5) There will be no existence of unfair advantage for incumbent politicians who use their pork barrel during elections. 6) Abolishing pork barrel, theoretically, would result in a cleaner, much less corrupt Congress and Senate. Without the possibility of earning cash through the corrupt pork barrel system, Congress and Senate will most likely attract people who are actually in it for public service, not thieves or pigs dressed up in expensive clothes that ride on expensive cars and live on bungalows, palaces and condominiums at the expense of poor Filipino people. 7) There will be an establishment of good governance in the hands of the Congress and Senate, inshaallah. 8) The Congress will be tasked with creating and making laws only, not spearheading costly projects. Congressmen and Senators aren’t voted into office because they can spearhead national and local projects. They were voted in to their office because they represent specific areas, groups, and policies that need representation in discussions when crafting laws. They can now focus on their jobs. 9) No taxpayers’ money will be going to private pockets of greedy individuals. 10) Congressmen and Senators alike will be receiving no “kickbacks” from their “pet projects” anymore. 11) The abolition would minimize dishonesty in the government and public trust would gain its name.
Here are the effects if pork barrel will be abolished because it’s “good pork”: 1) The President’s argument regarding the utility of the pork barrel or PDAF for both the basic needs of the people and development interventions actually made sense to me….especially during man-made calamity as what had happened in Zamboanga and natural calamities like in Bohol and Cebu. The President’s Social Fund would really be a big, big help to the Filipino people in need (which the President considered as his bosses) as he crosses the right path or direction. 2) There will be non-completion of vital infrastructure projects that had been already started and non-construction of those that had already been budgeted. 3) There will also be termination of scholarships to those students who are studying as of the moment since the school year had not ended yet. 4) Health enhancement and support will be lessened like the construction of government hospitals and barangay health stations needed to reach all the people with the goal of “kalusugang pangkalahatan” for health development. 5) Neglect of projects that executive agencies routinely disregard because they do not fall within their priorities 6) Abolishing pork barrel will have a disastrous effect on many local communities where a legislator’s pork barrel is often the only capital investment in the area. Pork barrel in 5th and 6th class municipalities……road construction, repair of day care centers, schools and barangay halls, livelihood projects…..provide employment and much needed infrastructure. The budget of these Local Government Units can barely pay for salaries and operating expenses, and their needs tend to fall out of the wider screen of national and provincial authorities. A reduction in the pork barrel….coupled with reduction in their Internal Revenue Allotments will be disastrous to poor communities. 7) Abolishing pork barrel will further weaken legislature-executive checks-and-balances and tilt the balance of power to create an “Imperial Presidency” because the President will be the only one who has the power to fund projects.
The creation of a continued public and private audit would minimize political dishonesty. If we strip the issue down to its bare essentials, it boils down to accountability. It’s like us when we are kids…..when our parents give us an allowance, we are obligated to report expenditures honestly.
Before we can move forward, however, I appeal to President Benigno Aquino III to make a strong stand, so that those guilty are held accountable and the sums stolen are rightfully returned. If even half the stolen amount will be returned, the money could still go to the right projects.
It is only after these past wrongs have been righted that we may have a chance to work on other major issues, like the education of the masses and the provision of health care for the people.
Naming and shaming no longer work for calloused thieves. The wrong must be made right. No man should be above the law. May the truth and justice prevail in this time of deceit and disillusionment….for the sake of this generation and for the generations to come.
May the PDAF or pork barrel scam enlightened all of the public servants to do what is right and be honest and uphold the public trust. May there be greater transparency, accountability and rationality in the utilization of all public expenditures. May the government promote greater transparency in the use of all public funds by requiring projects to be listed in publicly available reports through the Internet and print media: sunshine is still the best disinfectant for wasteful government spending or expenditures. Transparency and accountability can be required through a resolution passed by each chamber of Congress, the exercise of legislative leadership by Speaker and Senate President, and the observance of the freedom of information provision of the Constitution.
Hopefully, hand in hand, we could form more advocacy and watchdog groups that will monitor public spending and force government to open public documents for scrutiny……groups like “Citizens Against Government Waste” and “Taxpayers for Common Sense” who have data on aggregate pork barrel spending.
Lastly, this can be fully realized if all the elected officials learn to respect the our country and recognize that they are public servants and a major partner in good governance….that they are civil servants and are nation-builders as well.