A bigger scam

The pork barrel scam allegedly masterminded by Janet Lim Napoles is estimated to cost the government at least P10 billion. But there is a much bigger scam involving tens of billions more than that amount, and people are not even aware it is a scam. Worse, it involves no less than President Aquino himself.

Aquino's PantawidPamilyang Pilipino Program or 4Ps is a cash doleout to the poor that, just like the pork barrel, scoops up money from government and plunks it into a bin of personal interests -- in this case the consuming to protect Aquino from any upheaval in the ranks of the masses.

Keeping the poor on the side of Aquino requires making them dependent on his monthly doleouts. This is the only meaningful use for the billions of pesos in taxes that could have been spent wisely elsewhere. And how are the billions used by the beneficiaries? Why, as capital for tong-its and a round of drinks, that's how.

But it is not just the poor who get to be enrolled in the 4Ps program, as Aquino seems to think. Many of those enrolled in the program are actually people who can well afford to live comfortably, if not in luxury. They are in the program because they happen to be friends or relatives of the program's implementors.

But of course even if Aquino knew, he does not care. His only concern is keeping himself safe, at least until the end of his term. For as long as the masses are kept at bay, it is no skin off his back who else gets to suck on the taxes of others.

Good if all that money helps. But it doesn't. Instead of helping the poor harness their inherent skills into something productive and beneficial, the 4Ps program only serves to make mendicants out of them, making them the vanguards of a future nation populated by lazy and dependent citizens.

The people surrounding Aquino knew at the outset that the greatest threat to an incompetent president is removal from office by hungry and angry mobs. So they cooked up 4Ps. They thought that putting money in the hands of people will make them lie on their backs like contented pigs.

What Aquino's advisers failed to appreciate is that people never learn to accept what they have. The beneficiaries of the doleout may be content now with their monthly P1,400 dole. But that will not be enough, eventually. Easy money will vanish just as easily. Pretty soon they will clamor for more.

At this point, there is no assurance the successor of Aquino in 2016 will even continue the program, scandalously ineffective as it is. It if gets scrapped, a great cataclysm can erupt and swallow up the nation, unless, wisely, the new president, and the next president after him, continues the program until the end.

The 4Ps program is like a tiger that Aquino has mounted, and from which he can never get down from without risking getting devoured. It is one of the worst unthinking programs any leader of a nation can ever foist on his hapless nation.

I say it is a scam because it hoodwinks everyone out of what should have been plowed into the country in the form of projects and services, not as a means to buy peace and complacency to ensure that the president is kept firmly in power.

It is a scam because, instead of using the billions to improve the salaries and benefits of government employees -- soldiers, policemen, teachers, doctors, nurses, clerks, janitors and garbage collectors -- who work their butts out, they are doled away for beneficiaries to play tong-its and never ever bother Aquino.

Government nurses, for instance, are health professionals who had to pass licensure exams after four years of college. Day in and day out they risk their own health that others may get well. And yet government pays them salaries that are way beneath their human dignities and professional capacities.

The irony is that, while government ignores the dignity of health professionals like nurses and refuses to recognize the value of the work they put in -- paying them salaries that are not worth the pay envelopes they come in -- it chooses to plow good money into 4Ps so the poor can gamble and drink at will.

And why is it like this? Because the Aquino government is deathly afraid of the poor. Aquino has seen what the poor can do when they are hungry in Hacienda Luisita. Aquino has seen what poor disgruntled soldiers can do when they get angry at their commander-in-chief.