Category: pork barrel

In the Philippines, clouds of a different colour

… It’s often said that Filipinos habitually elect bad leaders because of our short memories of the past. But as temperatures and sea levels rise, resources grow more scarce and population increases, the effects of corruption and irresponsible planning promise a difficult future. It seems unlikely that our present politicians can lead us against such inevitabilities.

When the news cycle moves on from Haiyan and returns to the Senate investigation, the spotlight will again fall on familiar faces: Senator Juan Ponce Enrile was once the lap-bulldog of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Senator Jinggoy Estrada is the son of former president Joseph Estrada, who was ousted and convicted of plunder. Senator Bong Revilla, a popular actor, is the son of a former senator and movie legend. They, along with dozens of other politicians and officials, must now answer to accusations that they plundered public funds earmarked for reconstruction and development.

Alas, for Filipinos, this is an old, familiar story. Just as deadly typhoons are an annual reality.

To the international community, I urge you to donate what you can through reputable channels. And to the millions of Filipinos at home and abroad, let’s use this tragedy as a reminder to take our leaders to task. What’s at stake is nothing less than our future.

— Miguel Syjuco

Casino democracy

By Edilberto C. de Jesus

The title I owe to Benedict Anderson, the eminent scholar of Southeast Asian history and politics. Studying the electoral landscape, Anderson described the Philippine system as “politics in a well-run casino.”

His starting point was the robust response to the first post-Marcos provincial and local elections in 1988. Of the 27.6 million eligible voters, 81 percent cast their ballots. Nearly 149,000 candidates competed for 16,500 elective positions, or an average of about nine candidates for each office on offer.

Read on…

the president, people power, primetime

on facebook and on twitter it’s impossible not to see that indeed the president still has his staunch supporters who are behind him, benefit of the doubt (if any), all the way.  good for him.  makes it harder, even impossible, for coup plotters to make any headway in destablization/ouster efforts — forget it, guys, you failed in gloria’s time just because wala namang ipapalit na katanggaptanggap sa taongbayan, e di lalo pa ngayon, when vp binay, like noli de castro then, seems happy enough watching from the sidelines.  council of state? transition government?  asa pa.

but imagine if the veep were not a traditional politician, rather, bold and audacious enough to take the leap over to the side of the #scrappork movement, complete with a draft petition addressed to the president, with concrete steps toward a rational and transparent budget system (minimal pork discretionary funds, calamities and disasters only), for the approval and signatures of the millionpeoplemarch-ers.  the veep has missed the bus on that one, and so has his buddy senator chiz, and whoever else is seriously planning to run in 2016.

because the pork issue isn’t going away, and those who think pray swear it will are grossly grievously mistaken.  that a million people aren’t gathering in the streets doesn’t mean people power is passe or dead or at a loss; it only means that the people are a thinking people and they are levelling up, knowing full well that that it’s going to take more than an EDSA ala uno and dos, i.e., cosmetic changes, to get rid of the corrupt pork system, and they WILL find a way.  the only thing that will stop them is if the president beats them to the draw, sorry na lang ang kanyang mga kakonchaba.  now THAT would be pang-primetime.

tracking cj puno, initiative, pork

suddenly former chief justice reynato puno is all over the place, even making headlines.  ‘Bribery’ voids Corona impeachment — Puno screamed the manila times yesterday.  and i can’t help wondering if he is why the president felt compelled to go on nationwide primetime tv last night.  unfortunately the prez didn’t say anything new.  on social media people talk about having made abang, expecting something huge, something that would halt the fall, change the game, level it up.  alas.  back to the streets it is.

so, does the palace have reason to fear puno’s call for people’s initiative and referendum vs. PDAF, DAP, and all discretionary funds?  the logistics are difficult and complicated but, still, doable, and puno even has a timetable: he will be done drafting the petition sometime this november, and sees the referendum happening in january 2014.  (hmm, alam na kaya ng comelec ito?)  i suppose puno knows what he’s doing, he knows what went wrong with pirma’s chacha attempt via initiative in 1997, and there is every possibility that he might do fvr better.

and there’s the catch.  is puno thinking anti-pork lang or is there a chacha scenario farther on?  oct 8 it was when puno first sounded the call for a people’s initiative to abolish all pork. just eleven days later, oct 19, carmen pedrosa announced in her philstar column that puno had agreed to become the symbol and advocate of “crowdsourcing a new Constitution for a new Philippines.”

alarm bells ringing and all that.  i’ve made no bones about it on this blog, i’m against charter change that seeks (1) to shift us from presidential to parliamentary/federal system and (2) to delete economic provisions that limit foreign ownership of land atbp.  this is not to say that i would not welcome a serious public debate on these two issues via a website that might inspire and inform debates on print, radio, and television.  but i’m not sure that this is the right time for it.  not until the pork issue is settled, how ever long it takes.

besides, puno’s reputation is not all that sterling.  he has some owning-up to do if he hopes to win hearts and minds.  read ‘Unmitigated hypocrisy’ by lawyer democrito c. barcenas and then go back in time to President Puno? and Who’s Hot, and Who’s Not by antonio c. abaya, 2009.  the comment threads are also quite enlightening.