Context

The pot just seems ready to boil over.

If the Palace thinks the pork barrel scandal will blow away after three (conveniently oppositionist) senators are sent to the gallows, they will have to think again. There are just too many stories wafting about for this telenovela of a scandal to abruptly end.

More explosive stuff await just down the road.

Consider this, for instance: of the 82 NGOs cited in the COA report for misusing pork barrel funds, only 8 belong to the Napoles circuit. Seventy-two others have yet to be unmasked. A coupe or more operations are far larger than the Napoles operation. The names of the really major operators are now circulating.

The Secretary of Justice has been accused of being party to the Palace-led cover-up effort to limit the damage of the Napoles scandal. The bigger cover-up operation goes beyond the “dagdag-bawas” on the Napoles list. The bigger cover-up has to do with the other 72 NGOs processing pork funds and laundering them into kickbacks.

The Napoles scandal has been jazzed up in the media as a “P10 billion pork scam.” We are not sure how that figure was arrived at. Even if we grant that volume of pork funds did pass through the Napoles network, it is far overshadowed by the P23 billion in Malampaya funds milked out of the public coffers.

Stories circulating about how the Malampaya Fund was looted, the very visible players in this scam and the uses to which the looted money was deployed are even more shocking. When the beans are finally spilled on this particular scam, the Napoles scandal will look tame. The dimensions and the sheer impunity driving this is horrifying — and, I am told in hushed tones, the main players are prepared to kill to keep information from public view.

Then there are the congressional insertions, such as P40 million allotment assigned by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada to the Office of the Secretary of Agriculture that my colleague Jarius Bondoc discussed in his column last week. It was a generically labeled fund the Agriculture Secretary can dispense pretty much at whim. A lot of it, despite Proceso Alcala’s protestations, was coursed through the Napoles NGOs and to other questionable NGOs as well.

In sum, the Napoles operation is pretty much a small solar system in a large constellation. This is not to dismiss the significance of this particular operation, because here we actually have the evidence to prosecute. It is important, however, not to lose our sense of proportion over the looting that has gone on in our pork barrel politics.

On Thursday, a large crowd will gather to protest the corruption of our politics and government’s handling of the pork barrel controversy. The worse that could happen with this gathering is that the issues are narrowed and the protestors degenerate into a lynch mob, crying for a handful of politicians to be crucified.

The best that could happen to this gathering is that it situates the issues of the day in its fullest context. For as long as we remain within the framework of a pork-barrel state, scams will continue to happen. The political class will subsist on money politics.

This is the time to begin a national conversation on how to drastically reform our constitutional order so that we can foster principled (instead of patronage) politics. We must now declare the sort of poisoned politics we equated with democracy is in terminal decay.

Blunder

We have always known lawyers are not the best mathematicians.

The battery of high-powered lawyers responsible for preparing San Miguel’s bidding documents for the P35.4 billion Cavite-Laguna expressway (CALAx) committed a fatal blunder. The bidding rules required the bidders to include a 180-day bid bond in their submissions. San Miguel submitted a bid bond valid for only 176 days.

The three other bidders for the huge project pointed out the flaw in the San Miguel bid. It is now up to the DPWH to consider whether or not the inability to count days is material enough to disqualify San Miguel.

San Miguel, for its part, maintains this is but a minor blemish. The conglomerate insists its bid, which they think is most beneficial to government, should be allowed to stand.

To be sure, San Miguel has an enviable record for submitting strong bids for infra projects. Its bid for the airport connector road flustered rivals, and much of the business community, for its generosity to government. Many think San Miguel overbid, making recovery of investments doubtful.

But rules are rules. Dura lex, sed lex, the Romans say. The law is harsh, but it is the law. Never mind that lawyers are notorious for not knowing how to count.

The issue here is whether or not San Miguel may be considered to have fully complied with the clear requirements laid out in the bidding rules. Four days may not seem to be much. Still, the San Miguel bid is four days short of complying with the requirements —  no matter how strong its bid is.

If it was the DOTC conducting this bidding, San Miguel will have nothing to worry about. In its past bidding exercises, the DOTC proved that its bidding rules are elastic. In the case of the Mactan airport bid, the DOTC played down its own conflict-of-interest rules to accommodate the winning bidder. This is why the DOTC-conducted bids are so full of controversy and legal challenges.

Things might be different at the DPWH, which is conducting the CALAx bidding. An engineer leads the agency. For an engineer, an inch short is short.