What’s good for the goose…

What’s wrong with the call of House Majority Leader Prospero Nograles for an audit of the P4.6 billion in pork barrel funds allocated to 23 members of the Senate, or roughly P200 million each? Nothing, when you think about it, except one sort of wonders why a call from a congressman is necessary to get such an audit done.

Ordinary citizens, who are constantly lectured about their civic obligation to pay taxes regularly, would not be blamed if they had assumed that such an audit was being routinely and regularly conducted. In fact, one would assume that all legislators, both congressmen and senators, would have the utilization of their pork audited.

But then, one remembers that pork, technically the legislators’ Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), is not a budgeted fund which each legislator can disburse at will. To make a somewhat long story short, it simply allows legislators to designate projects which are then implemented by other departments and agencies of government, including the Department of Education, the Department of Health and, let’s not forget, the Department of Public Works and Highways.

PDAF is intended to take care of important development projects which, in the individual legislator’s view, might have "fallen through the cracks," as it were, in the tedious budget approval process. Since the legislators merely designate projects, but don’t really get involved in their implementation, there shouldn’t be any anomaly attributable to the legislators, right? If anyone can be cited for discrepancies, for poor performance or non-delivery, it should be the implementing agency, right?

So, why should there be an audit of the senators’ PDAF? According to the congressmen, they are responsible to their constituents for the utilization of their pork, and must show that much, if not all, of it goes to the localities they represent. But the senators, who claim a "national" constituency, tend to utilize their pork, not only for their cities or provinces of origin, but all over the country and for their "pet" projects.

These are what the congressmen want the Commission on Audit to check: What projects did the senators fund? Were they real priorities? What were the tangible results of the public monies expended? Who were benefited? How did they contribute to national development? The congressmen’s suspicion, let’s face it, is that these projects were not for, shall we say, national benefit.

The senators are likely to vehemently respond that none of them will stand in the way of such government audits. Since many of them have been sounding off on accountability of public officials, and on the absolute necessity of letting the truth be known, how could they object to this call? Bring it on, they will chorus.

Except it will probably be a golden opportunity for some of our senators – especially those who see the walls closing in, what with Speaker Joe and his operatives grimly predicting that the Senate will cease to exist by this coming July – to insist that Representative Nograles’ call is simply a way of distracting public attention away from the Senators’ continuing preoccupation with the fertilizer fund scam, the utilization of the Marcos wealth and, let’s not forget, Garci and Joc-Joc.

The situation is not helped by comments that Cong. Boy’s call exacerbates a "rift" between senators and congressmen, as if all that was involved here was two Houses of Congress bickering about inconsequential matters not affecting public interest.

However, the issues behind that so-called rift cannot be simplified or trivialized into an unseemly pissing contest, or a meaningless tug-of-war between trapos. Most people don’t even see it as a battle to the death between the legislative bodies, with the "stronger" or "more credible" group claiming the ultimate prize: institutional survival.

Whatever happens to cha-cha, these questions will continue to hound whatever body remains standing, whether it continues to be a bicameral House and Senate which the people want, or whether they approve a unicameral Parliament. The quest for truth will simply not be swept under a legislative rug, no matter how large or how ornate.

By all means, let’s have an audit of how pork was spent by both Houses of Congress. Better yet, let’s have a study of whether pork, by whatever name, Countrywide Development Fund, Priority Development Assistance Fund – whatever! – should be consigned to the dustbin of history and all allegedly neglected priority projects simply folded in into a national budget which acknowledges these projects as national concerns rather than a legislator’s private domain. After all, the total money spent is exactly the same, but accountability and responsibility are better monitored.

* * *

Let me put it this way: I welcome Armed Forces Chief Generoso Senga’s "Five-Point" guidelines reiterating civilian supremacy over the military and eschewing any pretended role as a "potent" political force which can make or unmake governments. I’m just wondering why he had to issue that memorandum to the troops, and having issued it, what good it does.

On the one hand, the AFP chief’s call hopefully signals the final and happy demise of that ridiculous provision in the Constitution which accords the armed forces the underserved status of "protector of the people and the State." That was the provision which then AFP chief, and now Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Angie Reyes, at the behest of retired generals filled with their own self-importance, resorted to when he "withdrew support" from his commander-in-chief at the time.

He did so, predictably, at immense benefit to his personal career, but at the expense of re-politicizing the armed forces. It is now infinitely more difficult to convince the armed forces to abdicate this brazenly political role, no matter what temporary heads like Gen. Senga say or do, albeit earnestly and honestly.

The basic problem, which we expand in a future column, is that the corruption within the military, so enthusiastically wallowed in by the senior officer corps inducted into the cabal in command, remains a red flag waved before a raging bull which is the younger officers and rank-and-file. For as long as this problem persists, and is perceived as not only tolerated but indeed encouraged by an incompetent and complicit civilian government, the military will deem political interference to be their historical mandate.