Pigs, politicians & the first swine victim

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. — Winston Churchill

Lawsuit: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage. — Ambrose Bierce

One thing about a pig, he thinks he’s warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one’s nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics. — Eugene J. McCarthy

HONG KONG — First of all, this writer wishes to express sincere apologies for all our human insults to pigs, which I think are so unfair to this cute, harmless (and very delicious!) animal. In the Philippines and other cultures, one of the worst insults a person can ever hurl at another human is to call him or her baboy, or a pig. Why such universal human opprobrium against pigs, when we humans love ham, sausages, schnitzels, hong-ma, asado siopao, lechon and many other pork foods? I didn’t read up on swine flu, but I hope this isn’t another linguistic slaughter or wholesale slur against our porcine friends.

By the way, before I totally forget, despite my being here in Hong Kong, which I always love visiting due to its breathtakingly diverse and world-class gastronomic wonders, Time magazine in its May 4 issue had a delectable article by Lara Day entitled “Pork Art” in its “Best of Asia 2009” feature. The verdict? “Best Pig: The Philippines.”

Time reported: “When itinerant TV chef Anthony Bourdain — whose love of all things porcine is famous — visited the Philippine island of Cebu with his show No Reservations and declared that he had found the ‘best pig ever,’ many viewers were as surprised by the hyperbole as by the country he situated it in. But not Filipinos, among whom the zenith of porky perfection is an indisputable fact. It was just a matter of time before the rest of the world found out. The pig that made Bourdain smack his lips with glee was lechon, or slow-roasting suckling pig, perhaps the Philippines’ most beloved dish.” Wow!

This column is also inspired by a front-page photo of Philippine STAR which I read in the June 25 edition of philstar.com and taken by Joven Cagande with the following caption: “A roasted pig dressed as a hospital patient infected by the A(H1N1) virus is paraded during the Lechon Festival in Balayan, Batangas. Hundreds of roasted pigs in different costumes are paraded during the feast honoring the town’s patron saint, John the Baptist.”

Whew! I had to rub my eyes, because I honestly first thought that Philstar.com photo was that of a demonstration by rallyists outside Congress, against our many pot-bellied politicians’ inordinate predilection for unhealthy pork barrel funds!

I don’t want to go down to the gutter like our many politicos, but we need to call a spade a spade, so I call our many politicians what they are — pigs! Sorry, again, to real pigs for the odious and demeaning comparison, but this is a figure of speech and not specifically meant to insult pigs. It is just my firm belief that our legislators in the House of Representatives and in the Senate were elected by us to make laws and not to make inordinate loads of money off pork barrel funds!

A President also often uses pork barrel funds as a tool for political patronage towards legislators who support or oppose her or him, and it is also the president of our republic who actually has the largest pork barrel funds, whether it’s Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Joseph Estrada or Fidel V. Ramos. We need reforms from the top down, and leadership by example, to lessen if not totally get rid of pork!

I heard that apart from a few legislators like Senator Ping Lacson (apparently no relation to Ping Ping Lechon in La Loma, I’m sure?) who refuses to touch pork barrel, independent-minded legislators like Senator Noynoy Aquino and Congresswoman Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel have reportedly been denied pork barrel funds.

Why are so many people already salivating over the upcoming chaotic political fray of the 2010 elections? Not all, but many of our politicians are acting like slobbering pigs (apologies again to actual pigs) who — if I’m not mistaken — are attracted to pork barrel funds of at least P120 million for each senator and P60 million for each congressman. Minimum lang yan!

If our politicos cannot totally do away with pork barrel funds, at least this taxpayer demands full transparency and accountability of how and where all hundreds of billions of pesos in pork barrel funds are being used or disbursed!

In our society where a majority are poor, where public school classrooms are always lacking and textbooks are of low quality, wasting state funds with pork barrel anomalies should be a high crime punishable by death!

Apart from alleged massive stealing, overpricing and other shenanigans surrounding our multibillion-peso pork barrel funds, it’s the often mindless allocation of these funds for the most inane, useless projects with no direct positive impact on socio-economic progress such as waiting sheds and basketball courts that gets me!

Where did the term “pork barrel” originally come from? American writer William Safire said the term “pork barrel” derived from a practice before the US Civil War era when white masters would give their black slaves salted pork in barrels to eat.

An American journalist wrote in 1919: “Oftentimes, the eagerness of the slaves would result in a rush upon the pork barrel, in which each would strive to grab as much as possible for himself. Members of Congress, in their rush to get their local appropriation items… behaved so much like Negro slaves rushing to the pork barrel.”

Out of embarrassment at their notorious abuse of the pork barrel funds as one of their top sources of graft, corruption and shameless thievery, our politicians have tried to obfuscate the issue with fancy-sounding names such as the Ramos era “Countrywide Development Fund” or its subsequent reincarnation as the so-called “Priority Development Assistance Fund.” Whatever they try to call it, it’s still filthy and shameless pork barrel that must be eradicated or decisively reformed!

On a more positive note, allow me to point out mistakes by the Department of Health, the World Health Organization and our news media in erroneously reporting different persons as the alleged first victims of swine flu in the Philippines. The first such victim was none other than starlet Katrina Halili, for didn’t she tearfully complain in the Senate that she was “binaboy” (swined) by her ex-boyfriend, controversial Dr. Hayden Kho Jr.?

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Thanks for your letters, all will be answered. Comments, suggestions or jokes are welcome at willsoonflourish@gmail.com or at my Facebook account.