DAPork, drilon, poverty

on top of PDAF, meron palang DAP.  Disbursement Allocation Program.  heh.  more like Da Additional Pork, huwag nang i-deny.

But Senate President Franklin Drilon said the DAP was primarily a “stimulus fund” meant to address criticisms in the first 18 months of the Aquino administration that economic growth was only half the 7-percent gross domestic product targeted by the government to make any wealth expansion meaningful to a broader base of Filipinos.

Drilon said that the P100-million DAP he received was used to build a convention center and widen roads in Iloilo as part of his home province’s bid to be one of the sites for the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference summit in 2015.

“The issue here is whether the funds were misused or not. I hope the public will listen to our explanation that we did not pocket everything,” he said. [bold mine]

WE DID NOT POCKET EVERYTHING!  ahah!  slip of the tongue?  so you did pocket some of it, yes?  like maybe 50 %? 70 %?

on teleradyo yesterday, vic lima listed the projects that chiz escudero spent his DAPork on, and on that basis pronounced him not-guilty of misusing DAPork.  excuse me, right now all i care to know of every senator and representative regarding PDAF and DAPork is, did s/he or did s/he not get commissions / kickbacks from the agencies and/or contractors concerned?  if yes, how much each time, and how much all in all over time?  what did s/he do with the money?  break it down, please.

it doesn’t matter what abigail valte is saying right now on live tv, that DAP is not pork.  what matters is that the senators thought it was pork, and they spent it like it was pork.  GOOD JOB, GUYS.

the bottom line is, we have yet to hear any porker senator or representative speaking up and saying s/he has or has not received any kickback / commission from his / her PDAF or DAPork.  so drilon’s “we did not pocket everything,” slip of the tongue or not, is quite a gem to be treasured.  at last, meron nang umamin, kahit pa hindi sinasadya ang pag-amin, kahit tila nadulas lang, puwedeng puwede na rin.

meanwhile, i imagine it’s all very busy behind the scenes for the entire network of porkers, trying to clean up acts that go back a long way, maybe even cleaning out bank accounts, holding fire sales, antedating documents, but quietly, quietly… because walls, and celfones, have ears.

meanwhile, senate prez drilon seems to think that giving up their PDAF will be enough to placate the public.

“While an actual vote has yet to be officially taken, a majority of our senators, myself included, have publicly declared that we will do away with our PDAF allocations in 2014 in response to the people cry for change,” Drilon said.

“There is no turning back as far as the pork barrel system is concerned. We have to institute these reforms in order to regain our people’s trust and conference,” he said.

if that’s trust and confidence (huy, inquirer!), the only thing that would bring back our trust and confidence in you, mr. drilon, would be if you set the example and voluntarily released for public consumption a fully documented accounting of how you spent your pork barrel from 1995 to 2007, and from 2010 to 2013, and how much went back to you as kickbacks / commissions — no doctoring, please, warts and all — and maybe your resignation as senator, unless of course you change your mind and allow napoles to testify in the senate, take the people’s side in this struggle for good governance, atbp., let the chips fall where they may.  but napoles or not, resign or not, you’d have to give back the money, of course, deducting only what expenses you can justify to the people.

the most depressing thing about the DAP exposey really is not that it distracts from the PDAF issue — because it does not, they are of a piece — but that it confirms yet again the saddest shortcoming of the aquino admin, i.e., the lack of a vision for nation, and therefore the lack of a development strategy, and a concerted effort, to achieve that vision.

asked at a presscon why the savings, the DAP fund of some 72 billion bucks, did not go instead toward poverty alleviation measures, da abigail replied, but there is so much criticism of the conditional cash transfer, referring to DSWD sec soliman’s dole-outs to the poorest of the poor.  ahahaha.  talagang yun na pala yon, next to trying to attract foreign investors to provide jobs.  so pyestang pyesta lang the government agencies and members of the senate and house of reps who are free to decide what infra to ramp up spending on, the faster the better, kanya-kanyang diskarte, in the name of “priority development assistance.”

in the context of worsening poverty countrywide, the question is, what development, and for whom?