License to steal

Former mayor Jerry Pasigian of Alfonso Castañeda town in Nueva Vizcaya could face up to 22 years in prison after being convicted by the Sandiganbayan of graft and malversation.

His offense? When he was mayor in 2009, the town government bought a 2003 model Nissan Patrol for P1.3 million without public bidding and registered it under his name.

Pasigian is expected to appeal his conviction, and it might yet be overturned. For now, however, he is deemed guilty, and people are glad that a mayor faces punishment for treating public coffers as a personal piggybank.

This is the prevailing attitude in this country. Let’s see if the conviction becomes final and the punishment is carried out. We’re also waiting for much bigger fish – public officials who have stolen billions – to go to prison. So far, only the small fry like Pasigian tend to end up behind bars.

Elective officials in particular seem to believe that the people’s mandate is a license to steal, and gives them carte blanche to use public office for personal gain.

Just look at that ugly fight over the proposed 2019 General Appropriations Act. It’s no secret that a reenacted GAA opens opportunities for corruption. And it’s significant that the national budget was frequently reenacted when Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was president, and is being reenacted again, for the first time in eight years, now that she heads the House of Representatives. The chamber with the perfect acronym, HOR, has been diligently finding creative ways to circumvent the Supreme Court ban on anything that resembles the pork barrel as we know it.

It looks like the new milking cow (call it moo) is the Road User’s Tax. Lawmakers are also fighting among themselves, questioning flood control projects even for congressional districts with no flood problems.

Apparently worried over the possible loss of funds (kickbacks?) needed to augment campaign resources for 2019, lawmakers have questioned the integrity of the guy they believe is at the heart of their woes: that nasty budget chief, Benjamin Diokno.

Ben Diokno has built a reputation for integrity. But let’s face it – by dragging his family ties into a complex budget mess, his HOR accusers have also succeeded in planting seeds of doubt about that integrity into the minds of people.

*      *      *

HOR members shouldn’t be surprised that Malacañang and Cabinet members have rallied behind Diokno. After all, the annual GAA is not the handiwork of just one individual or executive department. The Cabinet holds several meetings, as a whole or in clusters, to finalize the budget bill that is then submitted to Congress for deliberations.

One reason for our disjointed, anything-goes development programs and project implementation is that lawmakers are given such a wide leeway to insert their personal pet projects into the budget bill submitted by the executive branch.

The Supreme Court ruling did not entirely eliminate this congressional privilege. It merely limited the earmarking of projects to the period before the GAA gets the final nod of Congress, and banned lump sum appropriations whose utilization is left entirely to lawmakers’ personal discretion. 

Whatever new scheme or reform is introduced in budgeting has to be a collaborative effort calling for a collegial decision within the executive branch.

It’s interesting that the HOR members are venting their ire on Diokno. Surely President Duterte, who once served as a congressman, is fully aware of the intricacies of fund allocations and entitlements for lawmakers under the GAA.

The cash-based budget scheme proposed for 2019, which is meant to promote efficiency and transparency in fund utilization, is a significant move that couldn’t possibly have been designed into the proposed GAA without the approval of the Chief Executive.

HOR members have also been more passionate in going after Diokno than that senator who’s been outing the “pork”-like allocations in the  GAA, Panfilo Lacson. Maybe congressmen don’t want to tangle with guys with a reputation for “neutralizing” critics.

Taxpayers should be glad that dirty linen is being washed in public. Lawmakers aren’t fighting for the judicious use of public funds, but over the loss of their personal entitlements and control over our money.

Watch them brawl, study the issues, and see where our taxes go.

*      *      *

JUSTICE CARPIO, Part 2: For a more nuanced appreciation of Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio’s position on the memorandum of understanding that the Philippines signed with China for a possible MOU on natural gas development in Recto (Reed) Bank, this is the gist, in his own words, of what he told “The Chiefs” on One News:

Three Phases of the South China Sea Dispute:

I divide the South China Sea dispute into three phases. The first phase is when China claimed indisputable sovereignty to everything within the nine-dashed line.

The second phase is when the arbitral ruling invalidated the nine-dashed line. China then asked the other claimant states to meet China “half-way.” Does “half-way” mean half of the sovereign rights, or half of the resources, or both? China refused to clarify. With the ruling, other claimant states could no longer give up their sovereign rights which have been affirmed by the ruling.

The third phase is when China abandons its claim to sovereign rights to the EEZ (exclusive economic zone) of other states but is satisfied with half of the income from the oil and gas. This is the phase that the MOU envisions China to enter. Whether China actually enters this third phase is still not certain.

In the third phase China will realize that its claim to sovereign rights in the EEZ of other states is a dead end. China cannot eat its claim to sovereign rights in the EEZ of another state. However, China’s state-owned company (CNOOC) can partake of half of the income from the oil and gas as a service contractor of the state that has sovereign rights over the EEZ. This is the win-win solution in the third phase.