With no reforms, we’re stuck with pork barrel

Speaking for colleagues, Sen. Frank Drilon says forget constitutional reforms and focus instead on passing the P1.2-trillion national budget. He makes it sound so noble. But recent acts of Drilon and pals unmask their self-serving ploys. It shows them to be no different from wily congressmen who ride on parliamentary switch only to extend their own terms.

By mutual posturing, senators professed to be for elemental changes in the system, if through the right method. Asked to react to the bumbling retreat of congressmen from vile constituent assembly, Drilon prefaced his reply with an emphatic "I have always been for reform via constitutional convention." That was in sync with surveys on Filipino desire for changes to uplift their lives and stabilize the land. But taken in by public outrage against the constituent assembly, Drilon showed his real color. He dropped Charter change altogether by equating it with constituent assembly. And as justification, he claims that next year’s budget is infinitely more important than any reform.

What does that budget have in store for senators? Why, a restoration of their P200-million-a-year pork barrel, of course. Only days ago Drilon as head of the Senate finance body led his colleagues in deriding Gloria Arroyo for handing out only the pork slabs of Congress allies. The crass badgering for their greasy shares exposed as plain envy their earlier tirade against the presidential pork of P2 billion. It also showed that their sole interest in passing the budget is to take their pork and run.

The senators even put up their lone anti-pork associate Ping Lacson to bat for them. By complying Lacson tainted his crusade against pork. He used to say that legislators must not partake of the pork because it is public money. He thus looked silly in telling off Arroyo to not be stingy with the senators’ pork because it is not her money anyway.

A return to pork is not the only result of all this talk to do away with Charter change. There are victors other than pork-crazed senators. Because politicos had injected their selfish agendas in the clamor for reforms, the methods of people’s initiative and constituent assembly were tarnished. Worse, from demonizing by enemies of reform, Charter change became synonymous with political greed. With the cause of reform tainted, there will be no more push to amend the Constitution in this generation. That suits the vested interests fine, to the detriment of the poor.

Restrictive economic provisos will stay. That’s cause for celebration by monopolists and dummies of disallowed foreign investors. Sadly it also means continuing hunger. With the economy closed to most investors, growth will be slow as usual. Double-digit joblessness will go on.

The unworkable presidential system will stay. Candidates for that highest post will openly but illegally spend P2-5 billion for serious runs. The winner will remain the principal protector of the interests of bishops and other religion leaders. That’s the basic reason they fear a parliamentary switch. The raw ambition of politicos is only secondary.

The stranglehold of central authorities over local officials will stay. Governors and mayors will go on begging Manila rulers for rightful shares of tax collections. It will be a continuation of politics of personalities instead of platform.

Charter amendments to forestall coups d’etat, clean up elections, wipe out judiciary corruption, or professionalize the bureaucracy will not come to pass. Time to rejoice for the usual putschists, election cheaters, hoods in robes, and incompetents.

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Was the impounded pork shipment from China meant to be stolen from Customs custody? It would seem so from initial report of the NBI. This means that officials directly reporting to Customs chief Napoleon Morales have a lot of explaining to do about the disappearance of the contraband and its subsequent discovery in a cold storage in Pampanga.

The NBI investigation noted that "neither the apprehending team nor the Auction and Cargo Disposal Division ... conducted a proper physical inventory of the seized items." With botched records, it was tempting – if it was not already planned – for unscrupulous Customs men to hijack and resell the contraband. Which was what happened sometime between Sept. 1, when the contents of four 40-footer refrigerated container vans were inventoried and sealed by quarantine (not Customs) officials, and Nov. 9, when the theft was discovered.

The Manila district collector and the head of the Task Force Anti-Smuggling had led the "apprehending team". The auction division chief had drafted the disposal plan, endorsed by the district collector, to bury the 100,000 kilos of diseased pork in Pampanga. All three officials report directly to Morales. The pork was stolen from the Sigma Seven Warehouse, a private firm under the direct supervision of Morales’s chief of staff.

The NBI investigated the theft on request of Deputy Commissioner Celso Templo. Morales disliked Templo’s action, and ordered a parallel probe of the latter’s Customs guards for allegedly forcibly bringing the pork back to Manila. Templo said it was he who had told the guards to return to Manila when the Pampanga dumpsite was verified to be flooded and the escorted cargo incomplete.

Also, the Customs lawyer in charge of licensing importers, including Asia Golden Ark Marketing that brought in the banned pork, said it was he who discovered the consignee’s fictitious address in June. Atty. Reynaldo Umali recounted that the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service had previously accredited Asia Golden under the wrong address. When it applied for renewal of the accreditation in June, Umali first had an agent verify the address, then demanded an explanation from a representative. Only after the address was corrected did he renew Asia Golden’s permit.

About reports that Asia Golden’s accreditation should not have been renewed in June since it was caught smuggling similarly banned eggs from China in Jan., Umali explained that he took charge only in Mar., the same month he was empowered to prosecute smugglers as head of legal services. If a case was filed for the egg smuggling in Jan., it was by the CIIS, which unfortunately does not coordinate its cases with Umali’s division. The CIIS, he said, reports to Templo as deputy for intelligence and enforcement.

The CIIS used to accredit more than 16,000 importers. Under Umali, only 8,814 have been renewed so far because of rigid screening, he said.

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