Can P-Noy stomach DAP, the most rotten ‘pork’?

Not only due to rundown facilities is the Manila International Airport once again the world’s worst. Most of the blame lies on poor services and policies. Loiterers and racketeers abound in the country’s premier gateway, naturally giving visitors the impression that the rest of the country is the same. Airport bosses can’t even keep toilets working.

Aviation authorities add to the mess. Like, they have a rule: only two general aviation (private jet) takeoffs every hour, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Because of it, big firms that wanted to rush medicines to earthquake-stricken Cebu and Bohol last Tuesday couldn’t jet out. They were told to first get exemptions from the limited-takeoffs rule from the Dept. of Transportation head office. Yet there was no one there; Tuesday was a national holiday, the Muslim Eidul Adha.

The Manila airport has only two runways. To lessen flight delays, takeoffs and landings by commercial airlines take priority. Investors are grumbling that they can’t fly out of Manila by charter jet as often as they need to inspect field operations.

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Not the usual political kibitzers (Lozano, Topacio) but intellectual giants are weighing in on the pork-barrel debate. The issue has seethed from Congress’ Priority Development Assistance Fund to the presidential version, the Disbursement Acceleration Program. President Noynoy Aquino’s vain defense of both is bringing him to a tipping point. Exposés of congressional “pork” plundering already have pulled down his ratings 15 points. Clinging to his own “pork”, coupled with silly policies, can only further erode confidence in him. If aides go on ill-advising him to buck the public outcry for abolition, he might end up as hated as his predecessor Gloria Arroyo.

All “pork” funds are discretionary – prone to abuse by greasy politicos. Time was when senators and congressmen took 10-percent kickbacks from projects funded by their P200- and P70-million annual PDAFs. But with alleged fixers like Janet Lim Napoles they now pocket 90 percent. The outraged public wants it scrapped. Yet the lawmakers insist on their supposed “power” to effect Executive branch projects via the P27.5-billion annual PDAF. That alone, Supreme Court Justices Antonio Carpio and Jose Perez opine, makes it unconstitutional.

The DAP is worse, in many ways. The assertion that it speeds up fund disbursing to grassroots projects does not wash, says former budget secretary Benjamin Diokno. For if so, then why go through the long route of collating the yet unspent budgets of various Executive implementing agencies, then reallocating them in lump sums of P100 million per senator and P15 million per admin congressman?

That the DAP was kept secret from the public all these months, until exposed by PDAF-tainted Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, makes it all the more dubious. It doesn’t help that Senate President Franklin Drilon and Budget Sec. Butch Abad want the public to believe, on their mere say-so, that the P1.1-billion dole was clean. The DAP has not even been audited.

Staining the DAP too is that it was distributed right after Congress ousted Chief Justice Renato Corona in May 2012. The ouster was to insulate the Judiciary from Corona’s secret multimillion-dollar deposits and condos. Still, the lawmakers needed bribing to do the right thing, lament legal eagles.

Flimsy is Malacañang’s excuse for the DAP. Supposedly the Constitution allows the President and certain high officials to realign their offices’ savings to other needs. No less than Fr. Joaquin Bernas, a framer of the 1987 Charter, pooh-poohs it. Congress had appropriated those funds for specific Executive purposes, he says. Realignments by the President, in the guise of savings, break the budget law.

In justifying retention, P-Noy says the PDAF and DAP are alright in the hands of “honest politicians.” Oxymoronic, it goes against plain logic, social critic Randolf David points up, that good systems make men good.

Only time will tell if P-Noy can keep the “pork” along with uneven policies. Media, business, and legal sectors are disenchanted with his defense of erring appointees. He had denounced self-dealing in the Social Security System and the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System under his predecessor, yet now excuses repeats by his men.

To defy the admin, retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno advises concerned citizens to scrap the “pork” by themselves, that is, by People’s Initiative. Such public legislating would require a referendum, on endorsement by ten percent of the 56 million voters, with three-percent signing from each congressional district. But if the anti-”pork” groups are able to muster 5.6 million votes, what would stop them from legislating out politicos altogether?

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The National Museum has a new addition to its priceless collection: Galo B. Ocampo’s “New York Lady.” The 1949 masterpiece is a portrait in oil of an unnamed woman, when Ocampo was serving with the Philippine mission to the United Nations. It was then when he won second prize at the UN Art Exhibition out of more than 200 entries from all over the world. Also then, Ocampo studied heraldry, later employed to produce the Philippine coat of arms and the presidential seal. Ocampo belonged to the triumvirate of Victorio Edades and Carlos “Botong” Francisco that ushered modernism into Philippine arts in the 1930s.

Ocampo’s heirs, Mitch, Chikee, and Dennis, donated the painting in celebration this year of his birth centennial. Museum director Jeremy Barnes, trustee Maribel Ongpin, and advisor for the arts Perlie Rose Baluyut received the donation last Saturday.

In the same event was launched the coffee-table book, “The Life and Times of Galo B. Ocampo,” by art critic Alice G. Guillermo. It is the first, nearly complete print compilation of Ocampo’s works.

On exhibit till Nov. 15 at the University of Santo Tomas museum, Manila, are some of Ocampo’s magnum opuses. Main attraction of “Mysteries and Colors”: the oil paintings “Brown Madonna” (1938) and “Sagrada Familia” (1940), and photo-reproductions of stained glass windows of the Manila Cathedral (presently closed for renovation) and the Santo Domingo Church, Quezon City.

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