Miriam: 5 million votes vs pork barrel? It's not feasible

MANILA, Philippines - Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said it is "not feasible" to pass a law against pork barrel using the people's initiative system under the Constitution.

The  senator made this comment after former Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Puno suggested to conduct a people's initiative to enact a measure prohibiting lawmakers' pork barrel or lump-sum appropriations.

"That is an idealistic and constitutional proposal. However, I am afraid it will not be feasible, because the number of signatures required on a petition is too high and can be subverted by vote-buying, to convince voters to stay away," Santiago said in a radio interview.

Under Republic Act No. 6735 or the Initiative and Referendum Act, the people can directly propose and enact a law if a registered petition contains at least 10 percent of the total number of registered voters, of which every legislative district must be represented by at least three percent of the registered voters.

Following this law, Santiago said over five million voters should then sign the petition and it would be too expensive to conduct information and education campaign to make them understand the meaning and context of an anti-pork barrel law under the people's initiative and referendum system.

"The Comelec says that in the last 2010 elections, there were 50,896,164 number of registered voters, so the petition must be signed by at least 5,089,616 voters," she said.

The constitutional law expert said a "better alternative" to the proposed anti-pork barrel petition for initiative is a Budget Control and Impoundment Act, originally proposed by President Benigno Aquino III when he was a senator.

The senator said she has re-filed the measure, which will require the President to first ask Congress to cancel funds that were not spent after the enactment of the budget.

"The power to grant or not the request to impound will continue to belong to Congress. Thus, such a law will preserve the congressional power of the purse," she said.

Santiago added: "The President should not make a habit of requesting large budgets for some departments and then, in the middle of the year, juggle the funds, repackage it as DAP, and spend it the way he wants."