P100-M ‘pork’ per congressman; P3,000 for distressed hog raisers

Backyard hog raisers are reeling from meager government help to overcome the deadly African swine fever (ASF). Lawmakers are feasting after inserting P100-million pork barrel each in the 2020 national budget.

Hog men are required to surrender sick or healthy pigs within ten kilometers of ASF outbreaks. Only P3,000 is paid out per head. That reimbursement is for one piglet, whereas an adult fetches about P12,000. The Dept. of Agriculture is asking town halls to put up the reward and contain the epidemic to their locales. The DA’s P72-million emergency fund against ASF is for an info drive, anti-virus shoe mats in airports, and testing kits. A separate P60 million is for lending bankrupt raisers P30,000 each, interest free, to shift to poultry or vegetable gardening. Even if small-scale, such endeavors need hundred-thousand-peso capital.

Cash-starved municipalities are at a loss for sources of the P3,000-per-pig. The totals are staggering, industry leaders cry. In one affected Quezon City barangay alone were 264 backyard piggeries with ten animals each on average. In sprawling barrios of Bulacan, Pampanga, Pangasinan, Rizal and Antipolo, as many as 250,000 pigs must be culled – needing P750-million recompense. More provinces are under threat. Meat supplies are dwindling.

As hog raisers suffer, congressmen are divvying up pork barrels. A senior among them has admitted the amount – P100 million each – while claiming there’s nothing wrong with it. Yet the pork falls within the three Supreme Court definitions in outlawing it in 2013: (1) lump sums, (2) for projects identified post-legislation, and (3) variations thereof. The porky congressmen are incorrigible. Senators already had unearthed and President Rody Duterte vetoed P95 billion in pork in the 2019 budget. Yet congressmen feel entitled to such perk, this time totaling P30 billion in 2020.

The pork barrels will be for the congressmen’s pet projects. Most are indeterminate waterway dredging, farm-to-market (-pocket) roads, and fertilizers. Fifty percent kickbacks can be made from such contracts, plus five percent for the chief of staff. Let the P260-billion hog industry collapse, so long as congressmen have their pork.

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Col. Bong Nebrija is seeking authority for his MMDA traffic aides to confiscate driving licenses. One bus driver has racked up 98 citations under the MMDA’s no-contact fining system yet continues to maraud EDSA, he says. With police powers, the aides purportedly could have caught him earlier.

The problem is not with scanty powers, however, and the solution lies elsewhere. Research by Ted Failon in DZMM-Teleradyo illustrated it. The road monster exemplified by Nebrija was an angel compared to the three worst fine-dodgers in MMDA records, Ted’s team reported Monday. Duly videoed and notified, the first had notched 533 violations since Jan.; the next, 506; then, 435. Yet MMDA had not informed the Land Transportation Office, which issues and cancels licenses. Ironic, since it was the LTO that deputized MMDA for traffic duty.

Interviewed by Ted, ex-MMDA chairman, now Rep. Bayani Fernando, said the LTO can and must yank out habitual reckless drivers. Nebrija’s boss, MMDA general manager Jojo Garcia, vowed to personally relay to LTO his agency’s findings.

To get around MMDA’s system, sly violators simply file affidavits of loss of licenses, then secure new ones from LTO and ignore the thousand-peso fines for past misdemeanors. But with computer linkups, MMDA, PNP-Highway Patrol, and LTO together can ban them from the road forever. Rep. Edgar Mary Sarmiento, head of the House committee on transportation, is to look for computerization funds.

Going after fine-breakers and license-changers would do society good. Tidying up is basic in “broken windows” policing. When the New York City subway police started arresting turnstile-jumpers, they found that most carried concealed firearms and were wanted for more serious offenses. Muggings consequently subsided in train stations. Same with the streets of Manila. A speeding bus driver who threatened two traffic aides, my driver and me with a lead pipe – we accosted him for nearly running over pedestrians and ramming three cars – turned out to be the worst candidate for driver licensing. He was a dishonorably discharged soldier-turned-communist rebel extortionist wanted in Cotabato for various offenses. If goons like him are denied licenses, roads would be safer.

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Traffic aides confiscating licenses remind of the brutal frustrated murder of college student Agnes Guirindola in Jan. 1994. Then 19, Agnes was kidnapped, robbed, shot, and left for dead by three thugs, one of whom posed as an MMDA enforcer. Investigations made headlines, particularly memorable because in Today newspaper for which I worked, the metro editor and crime columnist Max Buan (now deceased) and cub reporter Malou Talosig (now a specialist in overseas Filipino news) helped crack the case. Malou, just graduated from the university that Agnes was attending, patiently waited outside the restricted ICU to get details whenever Agnes was conscious. Max, thinking like the detectives he had covered for decades, triangulated the time and movement of Agnes’ stolen vehicle, leading probers to the cohorts’ identities.

Agnes was driving her mom’s car on Panay Avenue, Quezon City, when flagged down by uniformed impostor Venancio Roxas. He got into the car and ordered her to drive about, picking up Roberto Gungon and a third man near an MMDA outpost. After forcibly withdrawing from Agnes’ ATM account, they made her drive to San Jose, Batangas. In a secluded roadside, Roxas shot her in the face and neck, then they sped off. Seeing the bloodied Agnes, barrio folk rushed her to hospital.

Trial was quick. In 1995 QC Judge Lucas Bersamin, now Chief Justice, sentenced Roxas and Gungon to death, affirmed by the Supreme Court. Through legal maneuvers Roxas got a retrial but was found guilty anew by Judge Demetrio Macapagal. He was ordered to indemnify Agnes for hospitalization, stolen jewelry and cash, and car repair, but never did. The death sentences were commuted to life terms with the abolition of lethal injection.

Question: were Roxas and Gungon among heinous crime convicts recently released; was it truly for good behavior; are they reformed?

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