Humpty Dumpty

Where is all this headed? Will there be reforms, and will they last beyond the headlines?

These are common questions these days as those under formal investigation for large-scale corruption in the pork barrel scam look ready to bring down with them everyone else, from their colleagues in Congress to denizens of Malacañang.

Now you can see why President Aquino won’t let go of the pork barrel system, and which branch of government has greater power over the public purse.

Since no one wants to change our precious Constitution, the political leadership finds ways of going around restrictions written into the basic law of the land.

P-Noy, having been a lawmaker for over a decade before becoming President, knows the budget process well.

But his pragmatism in using the process to push his agenda with Congress is now endangering the credibility of his principal agenda, which is the anti-corruption campaign.

I haven’t heard anyone express concern about lawmakers destroying each other in the current scandal. As we can see from the amounts being mentioned, if the membership of the two chambers is almost entirely obliterated in a mass arrest and detention without bail for plunder, it will save billions in taxpayers’ money.

This, unfortunately, is but a wet dream for the public. We’re stuck with this bunch of politicians for the remainder of their term, even if they are arrested and held without bail. We’ve had convicted lawmakers working and even re-elected while behind bars at the National Penitentiary, receiving salaries from Juan de la Cruz and getting an equal share of pork barrel allocations while they wait for a final ruling on their cases. Those final decisions can take a decade.

Amending the rules that allow this set-up should be one of the reforms to come out of the pork barrel scandal. Another reform is legislation that will permanently bar from public office anyone convicted with finality of any offense related to betrayal of public trust. No presidential pardon should overturn this ban.

People quickly see that our systems are designed to reward large-scale crooks (the small fry land in prison), large-scale tax cheats (again, the small fry see their businesses shuttered), large-scale smugglers, gambling barons and money launderers.

The system also rewards election cheating in whatever form, from overspending in campaigns to vote buying and actual tampering with vote results. An election mandate, once stolen, is lost irretrievably. Because election protests are resolved at a pace as slow as judicial cases, the cheater gets to occupy the disputed post often until nearly the end of the term. This is one of the greatest incentives for poll fraud.

Even the worst kind of election cheating – the elimination of rivals through murder – is rewarded by the failure to solve the crime.

Politicians talk of how easy it is to hire an assassin in this country. For as low as P100,000, you can have a rival permanently eliminated. One assassin who retired without ever being caught has since used his earnings to start a small but legitimate business. Even assassins get to launder their money easily.

If you want to buy the silence of an assassin in case he is caught, you must be prepared to shell out about P5 million, according to a candidate who was trounced by a warlord in one of the provinces notorious for election killings. The amount is meant to take care of the assassin’s family while he serves his sentence.

This is a suspicion of President Aquino’s family in the assassination of his father Ninoy – that to ensure permanent silence, someone took care of the families of all the soldiers throughout the two decades that they spent in Bilibid, and continue to take care of their needs now that they are free.

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Even if the Office of the Ombudsman does its job well and secures convictions at the Sandiganbayan in record time against even a fraction of the lawmakers implicated in the pork barrel scam, the convicts are still allowed to seek public office even while behind bars, until their conviction becomes final, or after they have served their sentence.

A principle behind this setup is vox populi, vox dei – if voters want to install plunderers, jueteng lords, smuggler and rapists in high office, it’s a free country.

So one urgent reform needed, hopefully in time for elections 2016, is voter and taxpayer education.

The average Pinoy voter must be made aware that all people in this country pay taxes in some form, through the value-added tax. The daang matuwid administration and concerned sectors can launch an information campaign so people will understand how much the government is taking as its share from transport fares through the 12 percent VAT on fuel, from every kilowatt-hour of electricity, from every flush of water in the toilet, every Diatabs and Decolgen no-drowse tablet, mobile phone service, cigarette and cheap brandy.

People aware of these things will have lower tolerance (we hope) for misuse of public funds and VIP treatment for a tiny elite, and will see through the self-serving epals who like to take personal credit for projects funded with other people’s money. People will also be less tolerant (we hope) of dole-outs from politicians again using tax money.

Informed taxpayers demand judicious use of tax money and express this demand at the polling centers.

We can either change what we can in flawed systems, or else build safeguards into systems we can’t change, to discourage abuse and bring transparency into governance.

The ever-widening pork barrel scandal shows us that when our public servants are entrusted with discretionary funds, they treat public coffers as their personal piggybank. Discretion becomes a license for abuse.

The ones who get away with it are those who learn early that if they don’t share, they go to hell. So they make sure their constituents or, in the case of senators who are elected at large, at least their home province, are well taken care of using their discretionary funds. But in the process, they take an inordinate personal share of public money.

Those who find themselves in trouble are the ones who don’t know how to share, or who play favorites.

These days we are seeing the high and mighty looking like Humpty Dumpty tottering on the wall. Are they actually going to fall?

We can guess that they’re hoping for redemption through the ballot in 2016, as many discredited politicians have done since 1986.

It will be up to voters to make sure all the Humptys will fall, and no one will be able to put them back together again.