Pork for everyone?

You must have read PNoy’s recent statement about the pork allocations for those in Congress? During a briefing at the Bohol Tropics Resort in Tagbilaran, PNoy said: “I instructed Secretary Abad that everybody should get their share in pork barrel allocations.”

 For one brief moment, I thought the news contained the happy announcement that PNoy meant for pork allocations to be given to the deserving Filipinos!

 However, as I read on, the issue of the pork allocation was raised in the context of the complaints of delay or non-disbursement of the pork barrel to opposition members in Congress. Sadly, the “pork allocations for everybody” referred to those in Congress just the same, not to the deserving Filipino people.

 To dramatize their complaint, Lagman and colleagues boycotted the budget hearings that started last Monday. So used to receiving unregulated pork during the past administration, now these opposition members are crying foul to a practice that they saw done to opposition members or the non-Arroyo supporters in Congress.

 PNoy is quoted to have said he was happy that his critics said he was not like Arroyo at all. His administration’s policy towards pork is not the same as GMA’s as explained by Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office Secretary Ricky Carandang.

 He said they will ensure that the “services and resources” get to the constituents. also explained that they are making sure that the pork allocation requests of the lawmakers are aligned with the priorities of the President’s, with national priorities. 

 Promising. Let us see how far this new administration can turn around the honest and effective allocation and delivery of the funds to serve the people, not the lawmakers themselves. 

 Those who will continue to boycott the budget hearings and those who will try to pressure the budget department to distribute the pork barrel in the style and amount that they have been used to in the past administration deserve to be censured and boycotted as well by their constituents who can confirm whether the past huge pork allocations given in the past administrations really reached them or not.

 The continuing face of poverty in most areas of the country is the best proof about how little of the pork barrel allocations have reached the most needy.

 The allocation of the pork barrel must carry the responsibility of proof of effective delivery of resources and services to the constituents. Lawmakers, whose constituents continue to remain poor, without jobs, without shelters, without education and health benefits, should be given no pork at all. Instead, in such cases, the national government should take over the effective disbursement and use of public funds to ensure that the intended beneficiaries truly receive their fair share.

 Rather than prioritize roads and bridges, the new administration may also wish to insist on the use of the pork barrel funds as originally intended: as priority development assistance fund (PDAF). More than roads and bridges, what our people all throughout the country need are very obvious except to the lawmakers who claim to be their representatives. These basic needs for sustainable food supply and distribution, shelter, employment, education and health services have been there for centuries. Perhaps if infrastructure has to be included, let the projects be for sustainable safe water supply and sanitary toilets to ensure the health of our people all throughout our country. Hopefully, during this administration, effective and adequate irrigation facilities as well as fishing vessels and forestry management projects will be installed to assure continuing food supply for our people.

 Let the likes of the pork barrel abusers be exposed so that the public funds will be put to honest, effective use to meet our people’s needs. If the present PNoy administration can secure the legal mechanisms for regulating and monitoring the use of public funds and the pork barrel, then perhaps someday, the pork allocations may hopefully and finally end up for everyone’s, for every Filipino’s use?

 Our people and our country deserve a definite moral shift towards the direction of honest and God-centered governance. Can the PNoy government provide that moral shift, starting with the honest and responsible management of the problematic pork barrel allocation?

* * *

Email: [email protected]