JDV offers to open ‘pork’ to public

Following up on his call for President Arroyo to lead a “moral revolution,” Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. offered to make public the pork barrel funds of 240 congressmen and open up for audit disbursements made by the House leadership.

De Venecia mentioned these proposals in an eight-page letter to Mrs. Arroyo in his appeal to her to use the “vast powers of the presidency to lead a moral revolution in our public life.”

In addressing allegations of corruption, where congressmen reportedly get kickbacks from projects in their districts, De Venecia proposed a line item budgeting for the Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) of lawmakers.

“We will propose that all items in the countryside development fund be itemized in a line budget, publicized in full transparency, and subjected to public bidding, using the electronic procurement law Congress has just passed,” De Venecia said.

He assured Mrs. Arroyo that the House will do its “own house cleaning.”

De Venecia had a political fallout with the President following his son’s testimony at the Senate linking First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo and resigned elections chairman Benjamin Abalos over the controversy surrounding the botched $329-million national broadband network (NBN) contract with China’s ZTE Corp.

De Venecia is president of the ruling party Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats while Mrs. Arroyo sits as its chairman.

“We, too, will undertake a similar exercise – to rid the House of undesirable practices, and to focus its members on the public business,” De Venecia said.

De Venecia added they are “determined to subject all House disbursements of public money to the strictest scrutiny. Immediately we will be re-examining the CDF (the former Countryside Development Fund) to prevent it from degenerating into a pork barrel program.”

His opponents, led by Reps. Luis Villafuerte of Camarines Sur and Pablo Garcia of Cebu, leaders of the so-called Reform Bloc of administration ally Kampi, have been pushing for an audit of House expenditures, which had questionable disbursements.

Nueva Ecija Rep. Edno Joson earlier said De Venecia should lead by example and make the supreme sacrifice by relinquishing his post, if only to show President Arroyo that he is indeed serious in weeding out widespread corruption in the bureaucracy.