TONY LA VINA | Now I am convinced: Pork barrels must go

By: Tony La Vina
August 21, 2013 11:40 AM

Two front pages of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 17 years apart, both tackle the issue of corruption in the pork barrel system. "We have been through this before," says Ateneo School of Government Dean Tony La Vina.

 

 

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Tony La Viña is Dean of the Ateneo School of Government. This article first appeared as personal note on his Facebook Timeline. We are re-publishing it here with his permission.

I posted on Facebook pictures of two Inquirer front pages; the first was its August 13, 1996, issue and the second of Tuesday's (August 20, 2013). (See photo above.) In both front pages - in issues 17 years apart - the headlines were about the pork barrel and how corrupt it can become.

What do these pictures tell us? A lot.

For a number of days now, I have been weighing what position I should take on the growing clamor to abolish the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). I read a lot about the pork barrel, going back to the origin of the term in the United States Congress. I went back to our history - the pre-martial law era when some form of pork barrel was also prevalent to its re-emergence when President Cory Aquino came into power and now in the enormity of the scandal rocking the country. I facilitated discussions in my Facebook walls and page on the issue and posted different opinions about it as well.

I see the logic of the President's argument regarding the utility of the PDAF for both basic needs of people and development interventions. Many times I have seen constituents go to their representatives for assistance for illnesses. Some essential infrastructure projects, especially in remote places that would otherwise not be given attention to by national agencies, would not have been built if not for the PDAF of some representative or senator.

Even the Ateneo School of Government, of which I am Dean, has benefited a few times from the PDAF of representatives who partnered with local governments so we could deliver training programs to those LGUs. So I understand where the President is coming from. I certainly do not believe that better decisions on local programs and projects can be made by the national government or by technocrats. The experience of the Marcos dictatorship, where there was no pork barrel because there was no Congress, tells us that corruption can be as bad or even worse with technocrats at the helm of most departments.

While recognizing that the PDAF could sometimes be used for the good, it has always been clear to me that the PDAF and its predecessor mechanism, the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF), provide many opportunities for corruption. In fact, the 1996 expose of the Inquirer informed, we know now, by the insider knowledge of the former Representative Romeo Candazo (who passed away on Monday), should have warned us already that this budgetary vehicle was beyond repair and that no matter what we did to make it more transparent and less corruption-prone will not work.

Indeed, the history of the CDF and PDAF since 1996 can be told by the futile attempts by the executive branch to control the PDAF and to make disbursements more transparent, but to no avail.

I realize now that by its very nature, the CDF and PDAF are anomalies not because they allowed legislators to have a say on what projects should be implemented by the executive branch (arguably still their role as representatives of the people) but because at the heart of the system is the legislator's involvement in how the projects are implemented and in particular who implements the projects. This is unconstitutional as it is a violation of separation of powers. This is also where corruption enters the picture.

I still believe that legislators have a role to play in identifying projects in their localities but it should be in the context of bottom up budgeting where local governments, peoples organizations, direct beneficiaries and other stakeholders have a say as well.

As of Monday, I was still ambivalent about the abolition of the PDAF. But when I saw the August 13, 1996, headline of the Inquirer, I made up my mind: I will work for its abolition. I was reminded that we have gone through this before. And that we have not learned our lessons. That we are again foolishly repeating our history. If we do this a third time we cannot be forgiven by future generations. And we will not have another chance.