People’s Initiative vs pork launched

CEBU, Philippines - The Cebu Coalition Against the Pork Barrel System has launched yesterday a “People’s Initiative” to propose new legislative measure to get rid of the old system.

Msgr. Rommel Kintanar, one of the convenors, said that all parishes in Cebu, academe and other non-government organizations will be tapped to ensure that they will get more than enough numbers of signatures filing the People’s Initiative.

“We expect to get more than one million signatures for Cebu alone, aron di ta ma technical,” said Kintanar.

With over 52 million registered voters nationwide, the coalition needs more than 5 million or at least ten percent of said registered voters to sign for this initiative.

“We are confident that we will surpass the constitutional requirement,” read the coalition’s press statement.

In line with the plan to propose for People’s Initiative, a massive, extensive and thorough campaign of compiling vetted voter’s signatures will be implemented initially through each parish in 86 dioceses around the country.

In addition, each school, college or university in every city, town, province and region will be canvassed.

The coalition will also count heavily on the many employees and allied business groups, business chambers and companies.

Supporting this massive campaign will be a parallel effort of education and information dissemination by parish, social sector, school district, barangay, city, town and province.

Kintanar said that there will be primers that will be distributed on pork barrel system wherein it will talk about the negative effects of the system, the current pork barrel scam, and alternatives to the current system.

Lawyer Ernesto Francisco, one of the convenors during the launching yesterday, said that detailed plan for both the People’s initiative and education campaigns will be finalized in a national consultative meeting on November 9, 2013 at the Betania Retreat House, Nivel Hills, Cebu City.

Among the proposed legislations is to declare unlawful any member of Congress to have or demand any allocation in the General Appropriations Act or to make any insertion in the proposed national budget or to interfere or intervene in the lawful implementation of any provision of the GAA by any implementing agency or office.

The Office of the President and all departments in the executive branch are further prohibited from giving or providing a member of Congress any allocation in the GAA or allowing any member of Congress to make any insertion in the national budget or the GAA.

The Office of the President and all departments in the executive branch are further prohibited from making any expenditure, use or disposition of public funds which is not provided in or consistent with the GAA.

“We hope to finish the signature campaign 15 to 30 days,” Francisco added.—(FREEMAN)