Opinion

Agricultural pork 'paid' to inexistent NGOs

August 12, 2009 | 12:00am

Malacañang is frantic to downplay the First Couple’s extravagant $20,000 (P1 million) dinner party at a swanky New York restaurant. Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez had footed the bill, it’s insisting. But the nephew of notoriously flamboyant Imelda Romualdez Marcos is neither confirming nor denying the Palace line. Maybe it’s because he knows that the issue has nothing to do with who paid. It’s all about wanton profligacy. Makati mayor Jojo Binay hit the nail on the head. As he remarked, the amount that Gloria and Mike Arroyo and entourage blew in Le Cirque would’ve fed 3,000 poor families three square meals. More than that many people are starving in Leyte. As the latest SWS survey shows, half of the country’s 9.3 million households consider themselves poor, and 3.7 million families went hungry in the last three months. Romualdez’s owning up to the sin would only magnify that he got P1.7 billion in pork barrel last year — yet his constituents remain destitute. Everyone knows in whose pocket pork funds actually end up. Everyone knows too the real intention — to prolong their hold on power and pork — of Con-Ass congressmen whose meetings Romualdez hosts in his house on the Arroyos’ behest.

It’s shallow obfuscation for Press Sec. Cerge Remonde to redbait. In demanding that the Palace explain its wastefulness, it doesn’t matter what he says that the militant Bayan is a communist front. Neither does his claim wash that not a single public centavo was squandered on the feast. Only the other week he babbled that the dozens of hangers-on to Arroyo’s US visit paid their own way. It turned out that Malacañang didn’t pay their first-class fare and lodgings all right, but Congress did, meaning public money just the same. Defensive asides of Rep. Danilo Suarez and Sen. Lito Lapid have no bearing too. “Food was bland” as the first carped and “service sucked” as the other railed because it was French and waiters meticulously had to change the china and silver with every course, It only meant that the meal was too expensive for officials of a poor country.

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While we’re at it, we might as well ask Suarez, as Arroyo’s regular traveling companion:

Is it true that he’s rushing the Development Bank of the Philippines to grant him a P1-billion behest loan by month’s end? This, even though his Suarez Agro-Industrial Development Corp. has owed the state bank P650,000 in land lease since 1990. (See www.i-site.ph/Databases/Congress/13thHouse/business/suarez-business.html)

The Supreme Court found the Suarez firm to have submitted a fake injunction bond with the regional trial court in Gumaca, Quezon. (See www.lawphil.net/judjuris/juri1998/mar1998/am_rtj_94_1257_1998.html) In a court tussle the transferee of the DBP property won against the firm. But the litigant is unable to attach any real estate of the congressman. He has no solid assets in his name, except cash in bank, jewelry and club shares. (See www.i-site.ph/Databases/Congress/13thHouse/SALS/suarez-SAL.html) Several SUVs are idling in his Forbes Park mansion in Makati. But no lowly sheriff from Quezon province could enter the guarded compound.

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(Continuation)

Gloria Arroyo’s favorite congressmen get the most pork barrel. But it’s no guarantee of their districts’ progress. Bulk of the pork funds only end up in the politicians’ pockets. They assign foundations to implement their projects, but these NGOs are only money launderers. Local officials who serve as conduits also get cuts, as in the case of the mayor of Pavia, Iloilo (see Gotcha, 7 Aug. 2009).

Example of the pork modus operandi was the Dept. of Agriculture’s P728-million fertilizer scam in 2004. Nine of the 13 NGOs that received multimillion pesos were inexistent. Yet the DA repeated the scam in 2007, another election year. Seven of the ten NGOs were dubious. Sen. Noynoy Aquino’s staff noted that three of the fake NGOs in 2004 got money again in 2007, as reported Monday.

Other NGOs that received fertilizer funds in 2004

• Aaron Foundation (Philippines) Inc. — received P8 million although its given address was a vacant lot;

• People’s Organization for Progress & Development Foundation Inc. — received P13 million, with COA reporting “found in address and equipment and personnel”;

• Philippine Social Development Foundation Inc. — got P28 million, “found in address but was closed”;

• Masaganang Ani para sa Magsasaka Foundation Inc. — got P11.5 million, “found in address but was closed”;

• Sikap Yaman Foundation Inc. — got P4.9 million in an office with “no signage, unknown in residential neighborhood”;

• Philippine Environment & Ecological Development Association — got P1.95 million in “multi-story building occupied by RMN Network”;

• Bukid Tanglaw Livelihood Foundation Inc. — got P10 million, “no signage, unknown in the area”;

• Ikaw at Ako Foundation — got P8 million, office in Camarines Norte has “no SEC registration”;

• Kabus nga Mag-Uuma ug Managat Foundation Inc. — got P.5 million, address in Cebu City has “no SEC registration”;

• Workers Cooperative of the Philippines — got P5 million, address in General Santos City has “no SEC registration”.

NGOs that received agricultural pork barrel in 2007

• Antipolo Philanthropy Foundation Inc. — got P146.6 million in address occupied by a school, “unknown in the area”;

• Commoners Foundation Inc. — got P9.13 million, address occupied by commercial establishments, “unknown in given address, no SEC papers;

• Coprahan and Gulayan Foundation Inc. — got P31 million, “no office or signage at given address”;