The Supreme Court, voting unanimously, ruled the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) unconstitutional. That ruling is a major blow against the curse of pork barrel politics.
In addition, the High Court deemed illegal the discretionary use of special earmarked funds such as the President’s Social Fund and the Malampaya Fund. These earmarked funds can only be used for the specific purposes intended by law.
It is not usual that the adjective “revolutionary†and the noun “Supreme Court†are found together in a sentence. This is one rare instance.
The pork barrel system is such an obvious anomaly, but it was never in the interest of any president to correct it. It is anomalous because it undermines the Congress’ oversight role by giving legislators a stake in spending public funds. That produces an obvious conflict of interest.
The fact that the pork barrel system also produces horrific leakages, dramatized by the Napoles operation, is a procedural matter. It demonstrates the lax controls resulting from the weakening of oversight functions.
Several petitions have been filed before the high court in previous years questioning the constitutionality of the pork barrel system, most notably the petition filed by senior lawyers Bartolome C. Fernandez and Ceferino Padua a decade ago. It was only this week, however, that the SC found the lucidity and the institutional courage to finally declare the anomalous practice unconstitutional.
The immediate institutional impact of the SC ruling is to strengthen the separation of powers that is at the heart of our constitutional order. This will be further strengthened if the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) is eventually declared unconstitutional as well.
If the PDAF weakens congressional oversight, the DAP completely renders null the legislature’s power over the purse. It allows the executive branch to completely reconstitute the national budget, beyond the pale of congressional supervision, by fabricating “savings†and redirecting the money to expenditure items entirely on presidential discretion. That renders null the General Appropriations Act (GAA).
Lovers of pork and defenders of DAP were fighting a rearguard action before the court handed down that dramatic ruling. Some legislators, exploiting the recent calamities that befell us, tried to circumvent the standing restraining order issued by the Court, tried to extricate the trapped PDAF balance and convert this into money for the relief effort. Palace operatives, for their part, tried to peddle the line that the DAP was essential to support the rehabilitation of the devastated areas.
The GAA allocates money for these uses. It is known as the Calamity Fund. Should that run short, the President might seek supplemental funding from Congress. That is the proper thing to do, given the principle of congressional power over the purse.
The improper thing to do is to wantonly juggle funds from purposes defined by the GAA to purposes whimsically defined by the President. In our laws, that is called “malversation of public funds†— no matter if it is animated by some humanitarian concern.
A number of local executives were charged for graft when they transferred funds to meet an urgent calamity. The President cannot be exempt from the same rule.
The Court ruling tightened the screws on the President’s Social Fund and the Malampaya Fund. This administration used money from the Malampaya Fund to buy a warship (and maybe that squadron of fighter planes from Korea). Edwin Lacierda justified the use of Malampaya money by saying the warship is “energy-related†because it will guard contested gas-rich islets. Only someone like him will find that argument sound.
The Social Fund has routinely been used to fund pet projects of legislators and local executives to buy their political allegiance. That will no longer be possible after the SC ruling.
Some commentators were quick to conclude that, without the PDAF, the President will lose the ability to control Congress. That is not necessarily true. The executive and legislative branches may continue to collaborate on the basis of shared principle or set of priorities instead of on the basis of bribery.
What the President loses, without the means to bribe legislators, is the ability to make Congress do strange things, such as signing an impeachment complaint without reading it or convicting a chief justice on scarce evidence.
By outlawing the pork barrel system, the Court diminishes the ground for transactional politics and widens the possibility for principle-driven alliances. That will not necessarily happen, of course. It will not happen if the present crop of politicians remains. They are in the game mainly to steal.
There was a time, long ago, when our voters chose rigorously so that only the best and the brightest access public office. Candidates distributed little pamphlets enumerating their educational attainments and professional achievements to impress the voters. That, indeed, seems a long time ago, looking at the intellectual and moral wasteland we call Congress of the Philippines.
Perhaps, by outlawing pork, the Court induces a new climate unhealthy for patronage politics and the outright bribery of entire institutions. That bribery of entire institutions is the hallmark of this political age where mediocrity rules and incompetence is king.
The Supreme Court ruling on PDAF gives us hope, although just a sliver of it, that modernity might dawn on our politics. There is some distance left to run, to be sure, before we rid the system of dynasties and pork barons.
The road to political modernity, however, now seems shorter after the Court struck that heroic blow against the pork barrel state. The system should now begin adjusting to a new condition where the struggle for political power is decided by conviction rather than by pork.