Pork barrel

It is now quite clear and undeniable that the campaign promises of Duterte have not been achieved. His commitment to eliminate the drug problem in six months is obviously a big flop. Instead, such drive only brought about the numerous extrajudicial killings of mere suspects in the violation of the Dangerous Drugs Law. And now, it is also turning out that his highly touted fight against graft and corruption is a sham as his minions in the Lower House once more restored and inserted the “Pork Barrel” in the General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2019.

As recently exposed, the 2019 budget contains appropriations of P160 million for each House member consisting of P120 million for “hard” projects such as road building and flood control; and P40 million for “soft” projects such as textbooks and scholarships. Apparently, the members of our House of Representatives who made these insertions do not know or has completely ignored the ruling of the Supreme Court declaring the pork barrel in the budget as unconstitutional.

“Pork barrel” is a political parlance of American-English origin (Michael W. Drudge, “Pork Barrel Spending Emerging as Presidential Campaign Issue”). In his book entitled The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines, Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas S.J. traced its origin to the “degrading ritual of rolling out a barrel stuffed with pork to a multitude of black slaves who would cast their famished bodies into the porcine feast to assuage their hunger with morsels coming from the generosity of their well fed master.” The Supreme Court itself defines the Pork Barrel System as the collective body of rules and practices that govern the manner by which the lump-sum discretionary funds primarily intended for local projects are utilized through the respective participations of the branches of the government including its members. 

Pork barrel in the Philippines has its origin way back in 1922. It was contained in the Public Works Act 3044 where the utilization of the funds appropriated therein were subjected to post legislator approval as provided in Section 3 which states that, “the sums appropriated for certain public works projects shall be distributed x x x subject to the approval of the joint committee elected by the Senate and the House of Representatives. The committee from each House may also authorize one of its members to approve the distribution made by the Secretary of Commerce and Communications xxx and said Secretary, may for purposes of said distribution transfer unexpended portion of any item of appropriation under this Act to any other item hereunder, with the approval of the joint committee. Thus pork barrel is originally in the form of congressional pork. Since then, every administration, from martial law regime and post martial law era, congressional pork was in existence in various categories like the “Support for Local Development Projects” (SLDP) during the Marcos Martial Law regime; the “Mindanao Development Fund” and the “Visayas Development Fund” and the “Countrywide Development Fund” (CDF), during the Cory Aquino administration which was also adopted by the Ramos administration aside from congressional insertions (CIs); The CIs and CDF were removed during the Estrada administration and replaced by the “Food Security Program,” the “Lingap Para Sa Mahihirap Fund” and the “Rural/Urban Development Infrastructure Fund.” It was also during this administration that the “Priority Development and Assistance Fund” (PDAF) first appeared in the GAA in the year 2000 and continued during the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) administration from 2001 to 2010 and the ensuing years.

In July 2013, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) uncovered the fraud of some P10 billion by a syndicate using funds from the pork barrel of lawmakers and various government agencies for scores of ghost projects after six whistle blowers declared that the Janet Lim Napoles (JLN) Corp. had swindled billions of pesos from the public coffers for ghost projects using no less than dummy NGOs for an entire decade. On Aug. 16, 2013, the Commission on Audit (COA) also found that from 2007 to 2009 or during the last three years of GMA the total releases amounted to P8.374 billion in PDAF and P32.664 billion in “Various Infrastructures including Local Projects” (VILP).

Thus on Aug. 28, Sept. 3 and 5, 2013 various petitions were lodged before the Supreme Court seeking that the “pork barrel system” be declared unconstitutional. And on Nov. 19, 2013, the Supreme Court declared as unconstitutional, among others: (a) the entire PDAF Article; (b) all legal provisions of past and present congressional pork barrel laws, such as PDAF and CDF Articles and various congressional insertions authorizing legislators – whether individually or collectively organized into committees – to intervene, assume or participate in any of the various post enactment stages of the budget such as but not limited to the areas of project identification, modification and revision of project identification fund release and/or fund realignment, unrelated to Congressional oversight; (c) all legal provisions of past and present congressional pork barrel laws…and the various congressional insertions which conferred personal lump-sum allocations to legislators from which they are able to fund specific projects that they themselves determine.

According to the SC, the enforcement of the national budget, as primarily contained in the GAA is indisputably a function both constitutionally assigned and properly entrusted to the Executive branch of government which covers the various operational aspects of budgeting including the evaluation of work and financial plans for individual activities, the regulation and release of funds and all other related activities that comprise the budget execution cycle. Thus, unless the Constitution provides otherwise, the Executive department should exclusively exercise all roles and prerogatives on the implementation of the national budget as provided in the GAA and any other appropriation laws (G.Rs. 208493, 208566 and 209251, Alantara vs Belmonte; Belgica et.al. vs Ochoa et.al and Nepomuceno vs. Aquino et.al) 

Hence, Duterte should really exercise his veto powers as President to remove the insertions in the 2019 GAA after determining that they are indeed “pork barrels.”

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