Roasting pork

 Tomorrow is SONA – President Aquino’s fourth State of the Nation Address – and the start of a new Congress, the 16th since the First Philippine Congress was convened on July 5, 1946.

A quick civics lesson: The Congress was actually convened on May 25, but that session, which lasted until July 4, was deemed the Second Congress of the Commonwealth. The First Congress thus had four Regular Sessions, two Special Sessions and one Joint Session, and officially ended on Dec. 13, 1949. It passed Republic Acts (RA) 1 to 421; RA 6 renamed it the First Congress.

The Senate had 24 members; the House of Representatives had 100. Even then, the First Congress had its share of electoral protests, resulting in two senators and one congressman being unseated and replaced. We do have a history of poll protest, don’t we?

This year, there are 292 members of the House, nearly three times the number in the First Congress, thanks to super population growth, gerrymandering (the number could have been more, if some other sinister efforts had succeeded) and this anomaly called the party-list system. The number of senators remains the same at 24 – thank goodness for that, I guess.

Let me boggle your mind with more numbers. This means that we – you and me, poor helpless taxpayers – shoulder a staggering P25.240 billion (I had to do this computation several times, on a calculator and on paper when my calculator could not accommodate the digits) in pork barrel funds or PDAF, the more official sounding Priority Development Assistance Fund, for these lawmakers (unfortunately, the two senators who shun pork are no longer in office), plus – I am sure – an equally staggering amount for the operation and maintenance of the Senate and the House and their respective staffs. I am getting severe stomach cramps just thinking about this.

I will grudgingly admit that pork, in and of itself, is not a bad thing, especially with the current implementation of the “menu” of allowable projects to be funded from the pork barrel. Constituents – that about covers everyone, I guess – have become so used to asking government officials for assistance of all sorts – from the proverbial KBL (kasal-binyag-libing or wedding-baptism-burial) to scholarships to roads – that lawmakers, who do not have access to funds like governors and mayors do, need some help in meeting all these requests.

But, creative and resourceful people that Pinoys are, we have found innovative ways to subvert the good intentions of the allocation, so that now, the mere mention of pork barrel conjures images of kickbacks, ghost projects and scams, and raises the hackles of all good citizens. Now, as the 16th Congress begins, there is yet again the stink of rotten pork in the barrel.