UP Forum July-August 2013

FORUM UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

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VOLUME 14 NUMBER 4

JULY-AUGUST 2013

Inside 4 The Judiciary Development Fund I n t e r v i e w w i t h R e p . Fe l i x W i l l i a m Fuentebella

Pork Barrel and the Use (or Misuse) of Other Discretionary Funds 2 | Evolution of the Pork Barrel System in the Philippines

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ince the pork barrel controversy erupted in July of this year the phrase “pork barrel” has been interchangeably used with PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund). What is the pork barrel or PDAF? How did it come to be a sensational issue in Philippine public governance? Under the pork barrel system, each branch of government (legislative, executive and judiciary) has its own pork barrel allocation. The latest controversy, however, has centered more on the legislators’ pork barrel.

PDAF Watch defined pork barrel as those funds “allocated to politicians such as congressmen and senators, to be used, based on their decision, to fund

5 "Avoid Obscurantism" Atty. Gatmaytan on the JDF 6 Visualizing the Ties that Bind in the PDAF 8 Searching for the Elusive Presidential Pork 10 Roundtable Discussion

Pork Barrel and the Use (or Misuse) of Other Discretionary Funds

16 Pork in LGUs Interview with Quezon City Representative Alfredo D. Vargas III and Barangay UP Chairperson Isabelita P. Gravides

14 | Philippine Feudal 20 | UP-ADMUSociety: The Pork in the Miriam College: Joint Machine Statement on the Misuse of Public Funds n July 12, 2013, an expose by the Philippine

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Daily Inquirer set off a wave of explosions in the public sphere. As the mass and social media unraveled the knotty story of scandal, corruption, fraud and theft in the highest places involving amounts that beggar the phrase “mind-boggling,” Filipinos came together, united by a sense of anger and betrayal at this latest, egregious breach of public trust.

This mass outrage found expression in the Million People March on August 26. Thousands gathered in peaceful indignation rallies at the Luneta Park in Manila, and at other public venues in cities from the north to the south, and in various locations around the world.

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he following “Joint Statement on the Misuse of Public Funds” jointly signed by UP President Alfredo E. Pascual, Miriam College President Rosario O. Lapus, and Ateneo de Manila University Jose Ramon T. Villarin, SJ was publicly read on 11 September 2013 at the rally dubbed Katipunan Kontra Korupsyon. The rally saw almost one thousand students from the three universities braving the rains to band together for greater accountability and transparency in light of the pork barrel scam.

According to a report,1 this was the first time in ten

2 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

EVOLUTION OF THE PORK BARREL SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINES... continued from page 1

Ruben Magan Gamala programs, projects in their districts.”

According to G. Luis Igaya of the Institute for Popular Democracy, the pork barrel is a practice of the Congress “to divert national funds into their districts whether it be in the form of public works (such as highways or bridges), social services (such as education funds or public school buildings) or special projects (such as livelihood programs or community development projects).” Simply said, the pork barrel is a public fund intended only for public purposes. Unfortunately, the pork barrel fund has become the center of controversy because of its potential as a source of massive and wholesale corruption in government agencies.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) reported that according to Sen. Panfilo Lacson the pork barrel fund is a “…big, big mafia or syndicate involving the executive and legislative branches of the government.”

This grand conspiracy of executive and legislative agencies, according to Lacson, has involved various agencies “in circles of kickbacks, corruption, patronage politics, and wasteful spending.”

How costly is this mafia to the Filipino taxpayers?

In the same PCIJ report, Malou Mangahas also mentioned that Sen. Lacson said that “less than 50 percent actually went to the programs of work. And more than 50 percent went to the many deep pockets of corruption.” Based on his personal experience, Lacson said that “the standard commission of a legislator is 20 percent.Depending on the insatiability of the legislator concerned, it could go as high as 50 percent, that is, for the most greedy really.” The only portions of pork barrel funds that are perfectly legally applied, according to Lacson, are the taxes and profit due the project contractor which do not go beyond 14 percent. He further emphasized that in a worst-case scenario, all the taxpayers get are ghost projects because everything else is just paper work.

The legislators’ pork is used for both “soft” and “hard” projects. “Hard” projects refer to infrastructure, while “soft” projects include, among others, the purchase of school and health supplies, livelihood assistance, scholarships and the like. Under the present pork barrel system, according to the Lacson experience with “hard” projects,“ at least half goes to the lawmaker” as commission while “soft” projects are “the worst…. the commis-

sion (is) from here to eternity, without limits.” Lacson estimates that only 50 percent of the legislators’ pork barrel is translated into projects, the good portion of the pork. The recent revelations on the Jeanette Lim-Napoles transactions with some government agencies confirm this figure is confirmed. In fact, the sharing formula is 50-40-10, in which 50 percent goes to the legislator against whose PDAF a certain project shall be charged, 40 percent to the JLN-owned bogus NGOs, and 10 percent to the implementing agency.

under Public Works Act 3044 which divided public works into two types: (1) national and other buildings, roads and bridges in provinces, buoys and beacons, necessary mechanical

equipment of lighthouses and (2) police barracks, normal school and other public buildings, certain types of roads continued on page 3

History of Pork Barrel The pork barrel system is a Western practice brought into the Philippine public governance practice by the United States. Chua and Cruz (VERA Files, 2013) report that in 1823, the US Congress enacted the first appropriation for rivers and harbors for the different states. However, the practice drew criticisms from opponents who claimed that it was purely political in purpose.

Hence, it was branded as pork barrel legislation. Pork barrel is also present in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

In Denmark, it is called “election pork” because it represents promises made before an election (Nograles and Lagman).

The pork barrel system is a pre-Civil War practice in the US. Chua and Cruz (2013) mentioned in their report three possible origins of the pork barrel in the US: (1) the practice of landowners of setting aside a definite portion of pork salted in wooden barrels for their black slaves; (2) the practice of American farmers of preserving pork in barrels in anticipation of the hardships of winter, when the pork was shared with their needy neighbors; and (3) that it comes from the old adage, “Bring home the bacon.”

In the Philippines, the pork barrel system was first introduced in 1922 with the passing of the Public Works Act separately from the General Appropriations Act (GAA). The first pork barrel was legitimized

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges Since it is high time to review the supposed roles and responsibilities of our lawmakers, let us return to the papers and go back to the basics. Quoting from the website of the Senate itself, here are the qualifications, terms of office and privileges: “No person shall be a Senator unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, and on the day of the election, is at least thirty-five years of age, able to read and write, a registered voter, and a resident of the Philippines for not less than two years immediately preceding the day of the election.

“It is worthy to note that the age is fixed at 35 and must be possessed on the day of the elections, that is, when the polls are opened and the votes cast, and not on the day of the proclamation of the winners by the board of canvassers.

“With regard to the residence requirement, it was ruled in the case of Lim v. Pelaez that it must be the place where one habitually resides and to which he, after absence, has the intention of returning.

“The enumeration laid down by the Constitution is exclusive under the Latin principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius. This means that Congress cannot anymore add additional qualifications other than those provided by the Constitution.”

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 3

was located.

During the Marcos reign, the pork barrel took a twist with the abolition of Congress. The sole power and discretion to dispense pork barrel was lodged only in one person, the President himself. This gave rise to the phenomenon called cronyism. One had to be within the sphere of power and influence of the then dictator president to enjoy special favors and privileges. According to Miranda (in Nograles and Lagman), “When former President Ferdinand Marcos governed through martial rule, the problem earned a new name— cronyism—and reached its height. The other difference is that at that time, the dispenser of pork was concentrated in one person—Marcos himself—with absolutely no check on any abuse committed. The national tragedy that followed was unprecedented in the country’s history.”

UPV College of Management Prof. Ruben M. Gamala

EVOLUTION OF THE PORK BARREL SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINES... continued from page 2 and bridges, artesian wells, wharves, piers, and other shore protection works, cable telegraph and telephone lines.

The latter is the forerunner of the infamous pork barrel. It was under the control and supervision of the Secretary of Commerce and Communications. However, before these could be distributed, prior approval from the joint committee elected by the Senate and the House of Representatives was needed (Chua and Cruz, 2013).

In 1925, Senate Minority Leader Juan Sumulong spoke before Congress citing the misuse of public funds in the form of pork barrel appropriations.

In 1950 the pork barrel system was stopped, particularly the practice of releasing lump sums for which no projects were specified. For the first time, the discretion of choosing projects was transferred from the Secretary of Commerce to the legislators. Subsequently, the law carried the identified projects of the members of Congress “being the representatives of the people, either on their own account or by consultation with local officials or civil leaders.”

The pork barrel system practice was further refined under the public works act. It was intended to fund “community projects” which were divided into two: “miscellaneous community projects” for congressmen, and “nationwide selected projects” for senators.

Although the pork barrrel system is inevitably associated with “politics” as shown by the quid pro quo or the carrot-and-stick relation-

ship, it could still be said that during this time the system was functional in terms of the check and balance mechanism between the legislative and the executive. Interest groups have their space, too, in the administration of government-funded projects under the system. This went on for some 50 years, although briefly interrupted by the outbreak of war in 1942.

The 1960’s However, in the mid ‘60s there was a stalemate between the House and the Senate. No pork barrel funds were released. In 1982, during the Marcos reign, a new item was introduced in the annual General Appropriations Act by the Batasang Pambansa. It was called National Aid to Local Government Units (NALGUs). Under NALGUs there was the Support for Local Development Projects or SLDP. This was the closest to the pork barrel system according to journalist Belinda Olivarez Cunanan. Each assemblyman would get P500,000.00. SLDP could be used both for public works projects (now referred to as hard projects) and soft projects—providing medicines, fertilizers, fumigants, insecticides, paints, sports equipment, etc. Under the SLDP scheme the assemblyman conveyed his preferences for projects to the Ministry of Budget and Management (MBM) which had the power to approve projects. MBM then released the allocation papers to the Ministry of Local Government (MLG) which issued checks to the treasurer of the city or district where the assemblyman’s constituency

The Cory Aquino presidency (1986) When Pres. Corazon Aquino rose to the presidency she restored the pork barrel system. In 1989, it started as a lump sum appropriation of P480 million and P240 million called the Mindanao Development Fund and the Visayas Development Fund, respectively. Representatives from these regions were authorized to identify development projects worth P10 million per district. Luzon representatives soon demanded their share. In 1990, the pork barrel assumed a new name: the Countrywide Development Fund, or CDF. Starting in 1992, each congressional district across the country was allocated P12.5 million and P18 million for each senator. Unlike in the past, there was no restriction on the kind of project the district representatives and senators may want to implement for their respective constituents.

The Ramos presidency (1992) Elected in 1992, Pres. Ramos was a minority president. His problem was how to muster support from the legislators especially for the president’s deemed priority bills, or to strengthen the power base of the presidency. The pork barrel was a convenient means to achieve that purpose. In 1994, however, the constitutionality of the CDF was challenged. The Supreme Court ruled that the CDF was valid and constitutional. In the case of Philconsa vs.

Enriquez et al., Nograles and Lagman cited the ruling of the Supreme Court thus: “Under the Constitution, the spending power called by James Madison as the “power of the purse” belongs to Congress, subcontinued on page 13

4 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

The Judiciary Development Fund Interview with Rep. Felix William Fuentebella

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Photo from Wikicommons

he Judiciary Development Fund (JDF) is a special fund established through Presidential Decree No. 1949, signed by President Marcos in 1984, “to help ensure and guarantee the independence of the Judiciary as mandated by the Constitution and public policy.”

The JDF is sourced from, among others, the legal fees collected from the courts, and according to PD 1949, shall be used to augment the allowances of the members and personnel of the Judiciary and to finance the acquisition, maintenance and repair of office equipment and facilities.

At least 80 percent of the JDF shall be used for cost-of-living allowances, and not more than 20 percent shall be used for office equipment and facilities of the courts where the legal fees are collected. The Supreme Court Chief Justice is given the exclusive power to authorize disbursements and expenditures of the JDF. In 2003, two impeachment complaints were filed against then Chief Justice Hilario Davide over alleged anomalies in the disbursements and expenditures of the JDF. The first complaint, filed by former President Joseph Estrada in June, was dismissed by the House Committee on Justice in October. That same month, Rep. Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr. of Tarlac and Rep. Felix William “Wimpy” B. Fuentebella of Camarines Sur filed a complaint for impeachment against Davide for “culpable violations of the Constitution, various counts of transgressions against the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, multiple acts of malfeasance and abundant breach of public trust and thoughtless extravagance, in the disbursement and use of the JDF.” The complaint was brought to the attention of Rep. Fuentebella by the employees of the Judiciary stationed in Naga City, who reported the “dwindling JDF cost-of-living allowances they were receiving.”

The impeachment complaint against Davide was eventually endorsed by at least one-third of the members of the House of Representatives. The case was brought to the Supreme Court, which declared it as unconstitutional

in light of the Constitution’s provision that no impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a period of one year.

Below is an interview with Rep. Fuentebella, who gave his thoughts on the JDF and the impeachment case of 2003 in light of the 2013 pork barrel scandal: Q. How effective has the JDF been in maintaining the autonomy of the judiciary over the years?

I think the JDF is effective because it has given the Judiciary flexibility with regard to the use of funds and where to source them are concerned. The flexibility, however, is confined to that provision of the 80-20 ratio—at least 80 percent of the Fund shall be used for cost of living allowances, and not more than 20 percent shall be used for office equipment and facilities of the Courts located where the legal fees are collected.

Q. Does this mean that each court gets the 80-20 percent, and the funds are not collected and centralized under the Supreme Court?

Yes. That was the subject of the impeachment complaint before. Because the funds were “centralized,” and then the people managing the funds used them to suit whatever the central office would decide how they should be used

even if it turned out to be against the 80-20 provision of the JDF law.

At that time, the Chief Justice saw the fund as part of the general fund which he could realign with other items that are not included in the law.

He even wrote Congress about it. That's why we said, as congressmen before, that it's an admission on the part of the Chief Justice at the time.

There were many allegations that we didn't have enough proof. What proof do we need when there was an admission from his letter to all the congressmen, to the Speaker, and to me at the time?

We accepted [the letter]. We filed it [with the impeachment complaint].

We had the numbers but it was not transmitted to the Senate because of the status quo anteorder (temporary restraining order) issued by the Supreme Court before Congress could act on the transmittal—just by way of background.

But that being said, our approach

then was friendly. We gave them a lot of leeway. Hindi namin minadali, until nagkaroon ng Oakwood Mutiny. Kasi parang parallel siya na—the grievances of the members of the military were the same as the complaints of the judiciary personnel. The only differcontinued on page 5

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges The Senate Proper is composed of Officers and Committees; the former is composed of the Senate President the Senate President Pro Tempore, and the Majority Leader while the Committees are as follows: Committee on Accountability of Public Officers and Investigations, Committee on Accounts, Committee on Agrarian Reform, Committee on Agriculture and Food, Committee on Banks, Financial Institutions and Currencies, Committee on Civil Service and Government Reorganization, Committee on Constitutional Amendments, Revision of Codes and Laws, Committee on Cooperatives, Committee on Cultural Communities, Committee on Economic Affairs, Committee on Education, Arts and Culture, Committee on Energy, Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, Committee on Ethics and Privileges, Committee on Finance, Committee on Foreign Relations, Committee on Games, Amusement and Sports, Committee on Government Corporations and Public Enterprises, Committee on Health and Demography, Committee on Justice and Human Rights, Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, Committee on Local Government, Committee on National Defense and Security, Committee on Peace, Unification and Reconciliation, Committee on Public Information and Mass Media, Committee on Public Order and Illegal Drugs, Committee on Public Services, Committee on Public Works, Committee on Science and Technology, Committee on Social Justice, Welfare and Rural Development, Committee on Tourism, Committee on Trade and Commerce, Committee on Urban Planning, Housing and Resettlement, Committee on Ways and Means, Committee on Youth, Women and Family Relations."

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 5

"Avoid Obscurantism"

Atty. Gatmaytan on the JDF

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THE JUDICIARY DEVELOPMENT FUND... continued from page 4

ence was: the military would use what they're good at—arms—whereas the judiciary personnel would use what they're good at—they just go through the processes under the law.

So even now, when I'm told to look at the JDF again, I would say that if there's an issue about it, I would rather talk to the CJ first before coming up with any move, because we don't want to be misinterpreted again [and accused of] interfering with the judiciary’s independence. ...[T]he letter [from the Chief Justice then...ganon yung tenor ng letter.]

The letter said that even if there was a problem with the JDF, please take note of the constitutional amendment that allows the Chief Justice as head of the Judiciary Department to augment other funds and other items from the savings.

However, that power to augment only applies to the general fund, not to special funds such as the JDF. It’s like this: We have a provision in the Constitution that says heads of offices, like the President, can augment items in the executive department from the savings.

It’s like the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), same concept.

For the Judiciary, [the Chief Justice] is the head of the department, right?

So the same power applies: The Chief Justice can augment items within the budget of the judiciary from the savings. Same with the Speaker for the House of Representatives. Same with continued on page 12

n the following interview with the UP FORUM, Atty. Dante B. Gatmaytan of the UP College of Law discusses the Judicial Development Fund and how it is similar/different from the discretionary funds of legislators and members of the executive branch.

He also shares his insights about the Fund’s effectiveness and how it has been used over the years.

Q. The Judiciary Development Fund (JDF) was established through PD No. 1949 to help ensure and guarantee the independence of the Judiciary as mandated by the Constitution and public policy. How is this different from or similar to the discretionary funds of members of the legislature and the executive branch?

The JDV is different from the discretionary funds that are within the control of the legislative and executive branches of government. First, it is not allocated by Congress, but generated by the operations of the Judiciary.

Second, there is little room for discretion. Presidential Decree No. 1949 requires that the Fund shall be used to augment the allowances of the members and personnel of the Judiciary and to finance the acquisition, maintenance and repair of office equipment and facilities. At least eighty percent of the Fund shall be used for cost of living allowances, and not more than twenty percent of the Fund shall be used for office equipment and facilities of the Courts located where the legal fees are collected. The Supreme Court’s use of the Fund is also limited by law.

Q. How effective has the Fund been in helping guarantee the independence of the Judiciary from external influences, particularly in light of a recent claim that the Department of Budget and Management sought tighter control over the Fund, thus “undermining the principle of checks and balances in government,” according to Rep. Toby Tiangco?

The Fund has succeeded in generating additional monies for the Judiciary. Given the historically low priority given by Congress in allocating a budget for the Judiciary, this nearly 1-billion peso fund provides the money needed to augment the salaries of court personnel and to purchase equipment.

There is no need for the executive branch to control the Fund. The check on the use of the Fund can come in the form of the government audit by the

Commission on Audit.

To be clear, however, there is nothing that stops Congress from amending or repealing Presidential Decree No. 1949.

Q. With 80 percent of the Fund going to cost-of-living allowances and 20 percent to capital outlay, has there been tangible evidence that the Supreme Court used the Fund wisely over the years (e.g. better facilities, employee benefits)? During the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Hilario Davide, some groups (the Alliance of Court Employees Associations of the Philippines) claimed that court employees do not get their fair share of the Fund (80 percent). Is there any basis to their claim?

Again, CoA reports should show, if at all, if the Fund has been misused.

It is true that there were allegations regarding the misuse of the JDF. The impeachment case filed by Representatives Gilberto Teodoro, Jr. and Felix William Fuentebella against Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide, Jr., was based on the results of the legislative inquiry on the manner of disbursements and expenditures by the Chief Justice of the JDF. In Francisco v. House of Representatives, the Supreme Court voided the impeachment because it violated the constitutional rule that “no impeachment proceedings shall be initiated against the same official more than once within a period of one year.”

We cannot be certain now about the veracity of the allegations but complaints convinced enough members of Congress to proceed with Davide’s impeachment.

Q. With the impeachment cases filed against Chief Justice Davide and Chief Justice Renato Corona, can it be said that by giving the Chief Justice the sole power to administer and allocate the Fund, as well as authorize disbursements and expenditures, we have produced a system that can lead to graft and corruption?

Any system is vulnerable to corruption. To be fair, we have no official determination that either Chief Justice administered the funds improperly.

Q. Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno, in a recent interview, assured

the public that there is no similar "pork barrel scam" in the judiciary, and that, in fact, the over P1 billion Fund for 2012-2013 is insufficient to improve the condition of courtrooms around the country. What reforms are needed in the judiciary to prevent potential pork barrel scams and promote transparency and accountability? Should the almost 30-year Presidential Decree creating the Fund be amended or updated to put more emphasis on transparency and accountability?

In a time of heightened public vigilance the Judiciary should adopt measures that can do away with acts or policies that create even the slightest impression of impropriety. The Court—and perhaps all branches of government—should avoid obscurantism. I think the Supreme Court even during the leadership of Acting Chief

Justice Antonio Carpio took an important step when it started to release their SALNs to the public. We should remember that the JDF is not done in secret—it is audited by the Commission on Audit.

-------------------Atty. Dante B. Gatmaytan is an associate professor at the UP College of Law and vice chair of the Department of Legal Method and Research at the Philippine Judicial Academy. He earned his Bachelor of Laws from UP. Email him at dan.gatmaytan@gmail.com.

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges The Senate Secretariat "performs all kinds of support services needed by the senators. The nature and form of such services range from legislative to administrative, financial and security services required not only by the senators themselves but also by their office staff and employees.” The Secretariat is composed of the Senate Sergeant at Arms and the Senate Secretary. The offices under the latter include: Deputy Secretary for Legislation, Deputy Secretary for External Affairs, Deputy Secretary for Administration and Financial Services and The Senate Legal Counsel.

However, under Joint Resolution No. 1, the salaries of the members of the Senate is increased to salary grade 33 with monthly equivalent rate of P35,000.00. The Senate President, on the other hand, is raised to salary grade 34 with a monthly basic salary of P40,000.00."

6 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

Visualizing the Ties that Bind in the PDAF Gabriel Sison, Pamela Anne Pasion and Giovanni Tapang

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he release of the Commission on Audit (COA) Special Audits Office Report No. 2012-031 opened a wealth of data that gives us a glimpse into how the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the so-called Various Infrastructure, Including Local Projects (VILP) funds were used by government agencies. The report gives a government-wide Performance Audit of the PDAF and the VILP of various implementing agencies from 2007 to 2009.

The data is in several tables and annexes that listed the non-governmental organizations (NGO) to whom funding was given by a legislator. One cannot immediately see the relationships between the NGOs and between legislators by simply looking at the tables.

Visualizing such relationships and quantifying them is a problem of network analysis and visualization. The visualization of the PDAF releases is what we address in this technical note.

We present a visualization at http://visser.ph/pdaf (using sigma.js), including interactive graphics.

Network Analysis Network analysis and tools have been used in many applications to date.

We have analyzed different systems such as prose and poetry2, SMS messages3, translations4, poetic styles5 and bill co-authorships in the Philippine Congress6 among others.

A network is a simple way to represent a set of objects or nodes with a defined relation between each other.

We call these objects a node or a vertex while we call the relationship between them an edge.7 Edges can represent different kinds of relationships, depending on the data set. In a social network, for instance, these could represent the strength of friendship relations.8 In a Congressional setting, on the other hand, these may represent co-authorships of bills or resolutions.9 Edges in networks can have values attached to them (weighted networks); conversely, one can set a uniform weight for the edges of an unweighted network.7 We can have directed or undirected networks, depending on the direction in which the relationship is defined.

Networks have been used to char-

acterize political systems such as the United States Congress10 and the Philippine House of Representatives.6 In such networks, nodes (called ego or actors) are the legislators themselves; the links between them can be voting patterns or co-sponsorships of bills and resolutions6 or common PDAF allocations to organizations, such as what is described in this paper. These cosponsorship networks can be used as proxies for the political party affiliation of the legislators. These can be derived by calculating partitions, or communities, that arise as a result of their level of partisanship.6,10 In general, nodes or actors can be persons, groups or organizations. In the current work, our nodes are the individual senators, congressmen, the implementing agencies (IA) and the non-government organizations (NGOs) that received PDAF allocations.

Methodology We took our data from Annex A of the COA special report1 and converted this to a table using Python. We then further processed the resulting data using an open source network analysis program, Gephi.11 We have taken two visualizations of the data by looking at the network built from legislators who have released funds to a common NGO and another network where NGOs who received funds from the same legislator are linked together. The two networks taken together define a bipartite network.

The first network that we created is a network where a legislator, represented by a node, is connected to another legislator if the two of them provided funds to the same NGO. We applied community detection algorithms in Gephi 11 to determine if there were groups of legislators that were likely to fund NGOs together. The legislators were colored based on what “community� they fell into.

The same was done to make a continued on page 7

Figure 1: Legislator network and detected communities. Sizes of the nodes are proportional to the betweenness centrality. (Colored, high-res, interactive graphic available at http://visser.ph/pdaf [using sigma.js], including interactive graphics.)

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 7 Figure 2: NGO networks and detected communities.

(Colored, high-res, interactive graphic available at http:// visser.ph/pdaf [using sigma.js], including interactive graphics.)

VISUALIZING THE TIES... continued from page 6 network of NGOs to which the PDAF were transferred. In this network, a connection is made between two NGOs if they received funds from the same legislator. As these nodes tend to connect more with certain sets of nodes, we use the same community detection methods to find what NGOs are connected with each other more and group them by color. As with the legislator networks, the colors are based on the communities that the NGOs fall into.

Results and Analysis The legislator network that we obtained has 186 nodes with 3976 edges.

We find that the network has an average degree of 21.38. This implies that, on the average, a legislator distributes his PDAF to the same NGO as 21.38 other congressmen as the degree is the number of connections that a node has.

In this network, it measures how many other legislators he or she shared the same beneficiary NGO. Certain legislators, based on the COA report, have high degrees. For example, Rep. Adam Relson Jala tops the list at 73 with Arrel Olano and Mariano Piamonte following at 66 and 64, respectively. On the average, each legislator has given his PDAF to 1.4 NGOs. The degree of a node does not reflect the amount that they give from their PDAF. Rep. Jala, for instance, has allocated only P32.086 million for the period in review. This is just an average of P0.43 million per NGO. The top PDAF releases belong to Senators Ramon Revilla (at P503.89 million for eight NGOs), Jinggoy Estrada (P491.495 million for four NGOs) and Juan Ponce Enrile (P469.49 million for 11 NGOs). In the legislator network, they have degrees of 30, 24 and 49 respectively. To round up the top 5 in PDAF releases, Rep. Philip Pichay

Figure 3: Combined network of NGOs and legislators. Edge thickness is proportional to the total amount of PDAF releases from the legislator to the corresponding NGO. Node size is proportional to the total amount that the legislator gave or the total amount that an NGO received. Node color is based on the detected community.(Colored, high-res, interactive graphic available at http://visser.ph/pdaf [using sigma.js], including interactive graphics.)

gave P180 million to two NGOs and Senator Angara gave P151 million to seven NGOs. Their degrees are 32 and 9, respectively.

We show in Figure 1 the legislator network and their detected communities. We found six communities. These communities are legislators that tend to give to the same set of NGOs together.

We can rank the legislators based on the number of “partners” they have; Adam Relson Jala tops the list in this case. This is reflected in the high degree or number of connections that he has. We can also add weight to these links by the number of times that two linked legislators funded a common NGO. In such a weighted network, Nerissa Corazon-Ruiz becomes the most connected legislator.

A more advanced technique is betweenness centrality which measures how “central” a given node is, which can be seen as a proxy for influence within the network.10 Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile tops that list. See Table 1 for more details.

We repeated the same thing for the NGO network. The NGO network shows an average degree of 7.68 which implies that 7.68 NGOs typically receive allocations from the same legislator. The NGO network has 69 nodes with 530 edges. We found at least five groups of nodes or communities. Each group is represented by a separate node color. As such, nodes with the same color are NGOs which are more likely to have received funds from the same legislator.

In Figure 2, the thickness of the arrows represents the weight of how the NGOs are connected to each other.

The stronger the weight of the arrows, the greater their connection is. Thicker arrows are funded together more often by more than one legislator. It can be seen that the nodes in blue and green groups have more weighted edges than the other groups, especially the SDPFFI NGO in the blue group and the KKAMFI NGO in the green group.

We can also apply some other network techniques such as looking at which node are important nodes in the NGO network. This is measured by the eigenvector centrality.11 The NGO which has the highest eigenvector centrality or the measure of importance of the node is the MAMFI NGO. This is followed by the CARED and SDPFF respectively, all of which have a measure of greater than 0.90 eigenvector centrality. See Table 2 for more results.

We find at least seven large communities of legislators and NGOs in the combined network that contains more that 5 percent of the nodes.

The largest of these has 18 percent of all of the nodes and includes (in descending degree) the Dr. Rodolfo A. Ignacio, Sr. Foundation, Inc. (DRAIFSI), Social Development Program for Farmers Foundations, Inc. (SDPFFI), Masaganang Ani Para sa Magsasaka Foundation Inc. (MAMFI), Pangkabuhayan Foundation, Inc. (Pang-FI), Juan Ponce Enrile, Countrywide Agri and Rural Economic Development continued on page 9

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges Privilege from Arrest: “This privilege is intended to insure representation of the constituents by the members of Congress. In Vera vs. Avelino, the Supreme Court, quoting a decision of the United States Supreme Court, explained for whose benefit the right to parliamentary immunity is secured: These privileges are thus secured not with the intention of protecting the members against prosecutors for their own benefit, but to support the rights of the people, by enabling their representatives to execute the function of their office without fear of prosecution, civil or criminal.

A member of Congress could only be suspended by the House of which he is a member and only for the purpose of self-preservation or self-protection. To protect a member of Congress from oppression, even this power has been circumscribed by the 1935 Constitution and further limited by the 1987 Constitution.”

8 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 Photo from http://surehitz.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-sample-reaction-paper-to-president.html

Searching for the elusive presidential pork Stephanie S. Cabigao

S

ince the misuse of some P10B in Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) was exposed, the pork barrel issue has gained wide public interest. Various sectors have expressed their interest in different forms, among them through the Million People March against pork barrel held in several venues such as the Luneta Park and Makati.

For Kabataan Parylist Representative Terry Ridon, “the PDAF scam is just the tip of the iceberg, or to use a more apt expression—it barely greases the pan.”

“There has been a lot of talk about the abolition of the PDAF, without people realizing that in reality, this fund represents a miniscule portion of a larger mother lode—the presidential pork barrel. We’ve done some research, and found out that this bounty could be worth anywhere between P1.3 trillion to a maximum of P1.5 trillion, equivalent to more than half of the annual national budget.”

But an equally important aspect of the PDAF is the presidential pork barrel. The search for the presidential pork begins with an inquiry into its definition. In an interview with the UP FORUM, Bayan Muna Representative Neri Javier Colmenares said that “Presidential pork may be defined as any lump sum appropriations that are subject to the discretion of the President and is usually used

in patronage politics and bribery and is a huge source of corruption.”

The long-time human rights lawyer, constitutionalist and expert on international humanitarian law added that the origins of presidential pork can be traced to the Marcos era when part of the budget went to the Executive.

“PD 910, for instance, rationalized the Malampaya fund and other incomes from energy-related projects that will be transferred to a special account under the sole control of the President. The Administrative Code (EO 292) has also given the President power over lump-sum funds without going through the budgetary process of Congress.”

Colmenares said that the presidential pork comes in lump sums in various forms such as the Special Purpose Funds (SPFs), unprogrammed funds, overall savings, special provision amounts in the regular budget of the departments, PAMANA funds, Conditional Cash Transfer Funds (CCTs), and most recently, the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). It also includes off-budget funds such as the Malampaya fund, the motor vehicle users fund, and the Presidential Social Fund (PSFs).

The Kabataan Partylist legislative team noted that the much-debated PDAF is only a miniscule por-

tion of the SPFs. A briefing paper titled “Prime Cuts” Dissecting the presidential pork barrel,” states that “The whole budget for PDAF can technically be considered part of the president’s pork barrel as the said fund has historically been used by the Executive Department as a carrot-and-stick method to gain support and patronage. It works in the manner that PDAF releases can only be made through a Special Allotment Release Order (SARO) which the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) processes. Without the SARO, no funds from the PDAF will be released. Despite the inclusion of a “no impounding of funds” clause in the General Appropriations Act of previous years, DBM systematically withholds PDAF releases to administration critics, while favored allies receive more than what is allotted to them.”

Colmenares revealed that “the president’s pork has amounted to a whopping P946.54 Billion. Despite the people’s clamor to abolish the pork barrel system, the Executive refuses to do so. In fact, the President’s pork was not abolished in the 2014 General Appropriations Bill recently approved by Congress on Third and Final Reading.”

“With these amounts under the control of the President, Congress has lost its power over the purse.

Because the President can realign the budget anytime of the year, from projects approved by Congress, to projects and budgetary items not found in the GAA, the President has practically castrated Congress of its power to appropriate funds.

The President, in essence, drafts the budget, approves the budget and implements the budget—a form of budgetary dictatorship that is not only a source of graft and corruption but also ensures his control and influence over every part of the bureaucracy,” Colmenares said.

“The DAP was enforced by DBM by virtue of National Budget Circular 541 dated July 2012. In the said Circular, Malacañang declared that due to the “under-spending of various agencies”, the President ordered on June 27, 2012 “the withdrawal of all unobligated allotments of all agencies with low level of obligations as of June 30, 2012 both for continuing and current allotment.”

DAP practically circumvents the appropriations approved by Congress for the year by realigning these to other projects, many of which were never even considered by Congress when it approved the budget, nor found in the General Appropriations Act,” Colmenares added.

The inquiry on how the presidential pork is abused and misused continued on page 9

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges Privilege of Speech and Debate: Bases include: Constitutional Basis and Rules of the Senate. “Members of Congress cannot be prosecuted for any words spoken in debate or in connection with voting or used in written reports or with things generally done in a session of either House in relation to the business before it. This protection is extended to them during the session on the occasion of the exercise of their functions either in their respective chambers or in joint assembly, or in committees or commission. The purpose of this privilege of speech or debate is not to protect the members against prosecutions for their own benefit but to enable them as representatives of the people to execute the functions of their office without fear of prosecution, civil or criminal.”

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 9

SEARCHING FOR THE ELUSIVE... continued from page 8 found that it is prone to corruption.

Colmenares said that like Congressional pork, presidential pork is discretionary and has been used for political patronage, bribery, and corruption as manifested in the use of the DAP as a form of "reward" to those who moved to convict former Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Among other scams that involve presidential pork are the P20 billion Malampaya fund scam being investigated by the COA, the questionable transactions involving hundreds of millions of PAGCOR funds under the Genuino and Naguiat administrations, and the illegal use of hundreds of millions of pesos in intelligence funds sourced from the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).

As the call for the abolition of the whole pork barrel system continues, Colmenares said there are concrete steps for pushing for its total abolition on the parliamentary front.

“Aside from actively exposing and opposing the pork-laden and antipeople budget since we have entered Congress, solons from the Makabayan bloc have already filed House Resolution (HR) 298 in the 16th Congress calling for the abolition of all forms of pork and re-channeling it to social services. Petitions have been also filed before the Supreme Court seeking for the abolition of such funds as the PDAF, Presidential Pork, and DAP and declaring them to be unconstitutional. Along with these measures in the bureaucracy, we are with the mass movement against pork, establishing networks with various sectors of society such as the organizers of the Million People March, the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, and the #ScrapThePork network.”

Colmenares addressed the question on the kind of system that needs

VISUALIZING THE TIES... continued from page 7 to be in place of presidential pork.

“The people’s intensifying clamor is to abolish the pork barrel, not just PDAF, but the whole pork barrel system and rechannel these funds to basic social services, substantial salary and wage hikes, and job creation that will benefit the people. The people are angry that their taxes are being plundered by public officials, legislators and their cohorts like the Napoles big time syndicate.”

“The people have not yet surrendered their fight to abolish the Pork Barrel system and this has affected the survey ratings not only of the President but also of the whole institution. The President must listen to the people’s call to abolish the pork barrel system instead of continuing to save his pork, or witness the fall of his administration when the people decide who the boss really is.”

In the proposed resolution, it is important to note how accountability and transparency can be ensured by completely abolishing the pork barrel system and eventually resolving the problem of corruption in government.

“Abolishing the pork barrel system alone is not enough in order to ensure accountability and transparency. We must call on the people to be more vigilant not only as to where the funds of the people should go, but also in supervising their public officials and teaching them what they must do and must not do for the benefit of the people, especially the majority of the people who are poor, marginalized and underrepresented. This may further abolish the corrupt rule of the traditional politicians which is well-entrenched in our semi-colonial and semi-feudal system.”

-------------------Email the author at forum@upd. edu.ph.

Kabataan Parylist Rep. Terry Ridon

Photo from https://www.facebook.com/kabataan.terryridon/photos_stream

(CARED) Foundation, Inc., Philippine Social Development Foundation Inc. (PSDFI), Ramon B. Revilla Jr, People’s Organization for Progress and Development Foundation, Inc. (POPDFI) and Erwin L. Chiongbian as its top 10 nodes.

The next largest community, with 15.44 percent of the total nodes, has Kabuhayan at Kalusugan Alay sa Masa Foundation, Inc. (KKAMFI) as a central node (with degree 34), and the following NGOs and legislators as members with high degrees: Buhay Mo Mahal Ko Foundation, Inc. (BMMKFI), Gabaymasa Development Foundation Inc. (GDFI), Gabay at Pag-asa ng Masa Foundations (GPMFI), Kasanga sa Magandang Bukas Foundation Inc. (KMBFI) and Reps. Roberto C. Cajes, Joseph A. Santiago, Edgardo M. Chatto, Mariano U. Piamonte.

The third largest community contains 12.13 percent of the nodes. At its heart is the Aaron Foundation Philippines, Inc. (AFPI) with a degree of 26.

The community contains Masaganang mga Bukirin Foundation Inc. (MBFI), Philippine Environment and Economic Development Association (PEEDA), and Reps. Erico Basilio A. Fabian, Emmanuel Joel J. Villanueva, Prospero C. Nograles, Philip A. Pichay, Prospero A. Pichay Jr., Jose C. De Venecia Jr., Eduardo R. Gullas, Gregorio T. Ipong, Marcelino C. Libanan and Danton Q. Bueser with degrees 2 or more. Other members of the cluster have degree of one.

The network parameters of the graph in Figure 3 is more accessible to the ordinary reader than the first two figures. The degree of an NGO in this graph shows how many legislators gave to a particular NGO. The top three NGOs are Kabuhayan at Kalusugan Alay sa Masa Foundation, Inc. (KKAMFI) with degree 34, Farmerbusiness Development Corporation (FDC) with degree 27 and Aaron Foundation Philippines, Inc (AFPI) with 26. This means that 34 legislators gave to KKAMFI, 27 to FDC and 26 to AFPI. The degree of a legislator in Figure 3 reflects how many NGOs he or she funded. As reported above, the legislators with the most number of NGOs to whom they gave their PDAF to are Senators Juan Ponce Enrile with degree 11, Ramon B. Revilla, Jr., with degree 8 and Edgardo J. Angara with degree 7. Represenatives Ignacio T. Arroyo. Jr., Mariano U. Piamonte, Edgardo M. Chatto, Erwin L. Chiongbian, Samuel M. Dangwa, Roberto C. Cajes all have a degree of 5.

The weighted degree of the combined network is proportional to the amount that each node gave or received. Those amounts can be seen in

Table 3 which lists the various network parameters for the said graph with the nodes sorted by decreasing weighted degree.

These are just a sample of the things that we can do with the network representation of the PDAF releases. Deeper knowledge about Congress and the interlocking directorships of the NGOs would also be extremely helpful if further analysis is to be pursued. This will be done in a future work. Nevertheless, these tools allow the average Filipino to glean information readily as opposed to tables and documents, helping them to better analyze and participate in the process of democracy.

-------------------Pamela Anne Pasion is a fourth-year BS Applied Physics student at the National Institute of Physics. She works on translations and network analysis.

Gabriel Dominik Sison finished his BS Physics degree in 2013 with an award for Best BS Thesis on his work “Edge-weight distributions in dense small node co-authorship networks."

Dr. Giovanni Tapang is an associate professor at the National Institute of Physics and is also the chairperson of the scientist group AGHAM-Advocates of Science and Technology for the People. Email him at gtapang@ nip.upd.edu.ph.

REFERENCES:

1 Commision on Audit Special Audits Office.

(2012), Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and Various Infrastructures including Local Projects (VILP) (Report No. 2012-03 Government-wide Performance Audit).

2 Roxas, RM and Tapang, GA. (2010). Prose and Poetry Classification and Boundary Detection Using Word Adjacency Network Analysis, International Journal of Modern Physics, C 21(04), 503-512.

3 Cabatbat, JJT and Tapang, GA. (2013). Texting Styles and Information Change of SMS Text Messages in Filipino. International Journal of Modern Physics, C 24(02).

4 Cabatbat, JJT, Monsanto, JP, and Tapang, GA. Preserved Network Metrics Across Translated Texts (accepted paper in 2013). International Journal of Modern Physics.

5 Roxas-Villanueva, RM, Nambatac, MK, and Tapang, G. (2011). Characterizing English poetic style using complex networks. International Journal of Modern Physics. C 23(02).

6 Sison, Gabriel Dominik. (2013, April). Edgeweight distributions in dense small node coauthorship networks (Thesis for BS Physics).

University of the Philippines Diliman.

7 Barrat, Alain, Barth Elemy, Marc, and Vespignani, Alessandro. (2008). Dynamical Processes on Complex. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.

8 Wang, Hua and Wellman, Barry. (2010). Social connectivity in America: Changes in adult friendship network size from 2002 to 2007.

American Behavioral Scientist, 53(8), 11481169.

9 Fowler, James H. (2006). Connecting the congress: A study of cosponsorship networks.

Political Analysis, 14(4), 456-487.

10 Zhang, Yan, Friend, AJ, Traud, Amanda L, Porter, Mason A, Fowler, James H, and Mucha, Peter J. (2008). Community structure in congressional cosponsorship networks.

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 387(7), 1705-1712.

11 Bastian M., Heymann S., Jacomy M. (2009).

Gephi: an open source software for exploring and manipulating networks. International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media.

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges “[T]he courts may annul any expulsion or suspension of a member that is not concurred in by at least two-thirds of the entire body or any suspension meted out by the legislature, even with the required two-thirds vote, as to any period in excess of the 60-day maximum duration. These are procedural matters and therefore justiciable.

“But the interpretation of the phrase ‘disorderly behavior’ is the prerogative of Congress and cannot as a rule be judicially reviewed. The matter comes in the category of a political question. Accordingly, the Supreme Court did not interfere when the legislature declared that the physical assault by one member against another, or the delivery of a derogatory speech which the member was unable to substantiate, constituted ‘disorderly behavior’ and justified the adoption of disciplinary measures.

“Other disciplinary measures besides expulsion and suspension are deletion of unparliamentary remarks from the record, fine, imprisonment and censure, sometimes called ‘soft impeachment.’”

10 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

THE UP FORUM ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION Pork Barrel and the Use (or Misuse) of Other Discretionary Funds

T

he rising outrage of the Filipino people over the pork barrel scam provided the impetus for the widespread call for the abolition of the pork barrel system. Thus, with the sustained and heightened peoples' participation and pressure on government officials, there is hope for the abolition of the pork barrel system.

We, in Bayan Muna, after the expose of the pork barrel scam in July, filed a bill seeking to abolish the pork barrel.

At that time, our colleagues in Congress told us that our bill was "suntok sa buwan." But Congress, after seeing the massive and continued protests of the people, finally thought twice about the issue. Suddenly, maintaining the PDAF doesn't seem like a very viable political idea even for the traditional politician. News reports would bear that the position of Congress transitioned from defense of the pork, to suspension, to abolition, and finally to come up with a new scheme hiding it.

For us the pork barrel system consists not only of the Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) of Congress, but also includes the presidential pork. We have defined the pork barrel as “Lump sum amounts, the disposition of which, including the selection of the project, its amount, and the beneficiaries, is left solely at the discretion of the pork holder.” Its nature is as follows: (1) It is nontransparent, making it a source of graft and corruption; (2) public funds are disbursed to favor political allies and withheld from the opposition in the form of political patronage and “legalized” vote buying; and (3) it violates the required collective and deliberative process of budgeting public funds, diverting these funds to unnecessary whimsical projects.

Based on our studies, the pork barrel system for the 2014 budget consists of the following funds: Priority Development Assistance Fund; Special Purpose Funds; Unprogrammed Funds; Overall Savings; Off-budget accounts, e.g.

Malampaya Fund, President Social Fund. Combined, the pork barrel system amounts to P946.54 Billion.

There is a problem in viewing the pork barrel system as being comprised only of the PDAF. First, the PDAF amounts only to P25.24 billion of the P946.54 billion total pork barrel, which is actually presidential pork barrel used for patronage politics. Removing only the PDAF would not eliminate the dangers and ills of the pork barrel system, because it is only a small component of it. Moreover, Congress would be wholly dependent on the President's patronage powers—the President doesn't have to distribute equally an amount of public fund to lawmakers previously available as PDAF; pork distribution would depend solely on the President's discretion.

So far, we have a number of legislators supporting the abolition of the pork barrel system, albeit the majority prefer to abolish only the PDAF. Only Sen. Chiz Escudero and Alan Peter Cayetano have also called for the abolition of lump sum funds. In the Senate, most of the senators are now in favor of abolishing the PDAF—Alan Peter Cayetano, Chiz Escudero, Grace

Poe, JV Ejercito, Bong Revilla, Bam Aquino, Franklin Drilon, Ralph Recto, Pia Cayetano, Loren Legarda, Aquilino Pimentel III, Tito Sotto, TG Guingona, Gregorio Honasan, Miriam DefensorSantiago, Nancy Binay, Ralph Recto.

At the House of Representatives, the Makabayan bloc, consisting of progressive party-lists Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, Kabataan and ACT Teachers, filed House Resolution No. 298 calling for the abolition of the pork barrel system, itemization of lump sum funds and allocation of the funds to basic social services, and salary increase for government employees in the 2014 national budget.

For Bayan Muna, no amount of reform can clean the pork barrel system.

As long as the policy of the government with respect to government funds and budgeting is undemocratic and nontransparent, with billions of pesos in lump sums and subject to the sole discretion of the President, the Filipino people who need social services the most will not receive it. Thus the only solution is to abolish this system.

-------------------Representative Colmenares earned his Bachelor of Laws from UP. Email him at nericolmenares @bayanmuna.net.

Neri J. Colmenares, LL.B Party-List Representative, Bayan Muna House of Representatives Republic of the Philippines

Q. O

n August 26, 2013 as the multitude of angry protesters convened in historic Rizal Park to hold the Million People March I spoke in Pinky Webb’s Mornings at ANC program and said “I am against the outright abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) because it is a simplistic solution to a complex problem."

I received a lot of flak for that statement including allegations that I have become the spokesperson for Congress and Malacañang. But my position is clear and simple. The issue is not the abolition of the PDAF, or the later and more controversial Development Acceleration Fund (DAP), or graft and corruption. The issue is about “discretion” in the use of public funds.

Over time, we have given a small number of elected and appointed officials in government vast powers, and broad discretion, to determine how public funds will be appropriated and spent.

Many of these decisions are

Is there hope for th If this is not an opti to ensure that publi and are used judicio

done behind closed doors and are not subject to public scrutiny and transparency. The broad discretion, lack of transparency, weak accountability mechanisms, and poor government controls breed corruption.

If “pork” is defined as lump sum appropriations, the disposition of which is left solely to the discretion of an office holder, then it now exists in all branches of government. It is called PDAF in Congress; includes the Social Fund and Malampaya Funds of the President; and lump sum appropriations in every department for “intelligence,” livelihood, farmers’ assistance, public safety, peace building, pollution control, road safety, and capital outlay for various purposes. There is the Judicial Development Fund (JDF) in the Supreme Court, and pork barrel in all provincial boards and city councils.

When we say “we should abolish all pork” what exactly do we mean?

Abolish all funds that are subject to the discretion of public officials?

While abolishing all “pork” will pander to the public outcry against corruption it will create more prob-

lems than solutions. How do we expect the President (or key cabinet members) and local governments to respond to the needs of affected communities hit by disasters? Will the President tell victims to wait for the next year’s budget so funds can be appropriated for the relief and reconstruction of their communities?

And if we abolish PDAF will corruption suddenly disappear in government projects? What about corruption in executive agencies?

Will shifting expenditures exclusive to executive departments reduce corruption?

This is what I mean when I say we should not have simplistic solutions to complex problems.

The issue of discretion and misuse of public funds can only be discussed and resolved if we do the following: First, we need to see the whole picture on the misuse of public funds.

How much public funds are subject to the discretion of public officials?

Where are these funds? What are the lump sum appropriations that are worded in generic terms such that continued on page 11

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 11

THE UP FORUM ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION Pork Barrel and the Use (or Misuse) of Other Discretionary Funds

T

he Makabayan Coalition in the Lower House, of which ACT Teachers is a member, has consistently stood for the abolition of PDAF and the whole pork barrel system. On July 17 and September 16, we filed (1) House Bill 1535 and (2) House Resolution 298 for the abolition of the pork barrel system and itemization of these discretionary lump sum funds, and their realignment to basic social services, substantial salary increases for government employees, and job creation. Both measures were filed as response to the intense public disgust against the institutionalized patronage and officially tolerated graft and corruption.

These proposals for much-needed reforms in the handling of and accountability over public funds were filed with the realization that we sponsors have to contend with political realities. We are aware that the pork barrel system and the culture of patronage it perpetuates are deeply ingrained in Philippine politics, and this patronage in the high levels of government is precisely the reason why laws benefitting the people are very rarely passed. Indeed, as confirmed by the responses of the President and the leadership of Congress (who have the most significant interest in maintaining the pork barrel system), the possibility of the enactment of House Bill 1535 and House Resolution 298 into law is nil.

However, we are confident that the righteous public outrage gener-

Antonio L. Tinio, AB Party-List Representative, ACT Teachers House of Representatives Republic of the Philippines

he abolition of all pork? ion, what measures are necessary ic funds go to target beneficiaries ously and effectively?

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION: DE VERA... continued from page 10 these can be misused? We know that the PDAF amounts to about P25B but beyond that we don’t know the numbers. We might be shocked when we find out that the “pork” in the other branches of government (and local governments) is much bigger than the PDAF that we are so agitated about.

If we find out that discretion results in the misuse of public funds, then we must make sure that these officials must be punished. This is non-negotiable. I support not only the filing of cases against corrupt government officials but also the public shaming of these officials to make sure they will not win in the next election.

We must then decide—should discretion be stopped altogether? Or do we still allow discretion but put

stronger control mechanisms in place? We also decide who among the government officials should have some discretion in the use of public funds.

Finally, once we know the amount of public funds subject to discretion, how discretion has been exercised, and determine the officials and offices that should continue having some discretion, then we debate on the proper allocation of public funds.

I support the call for rechanneling these funds for education and health care continued on page 17

J. Prospero E. de Vera, DPA Professor, National College of Public Administration and Governance UP Diliman

ated by the various scams involving the pork barrel system will propel this issue forward. The fight against all forms of pork—and any issue concerning public interest, for that matter— will be won not within the legislative arena, certainly not through the voluntary renunciation of the President and the Congress leadership. It is the people’s collective outrage, translated into action, that is decisive in effecting genuine reforms—until the government heeds the just demand of the people, whether out of fear of another uprising or because it adopts a principled stand, the pork barrel system will not be completely abolished.

The approval of the proposed 2014 budget is nearing in Congress, and ACT Teachers along with the progressive party-lists and like-minded legislators in the Lower House exert every effort to expose as pork discretionary lump sum funds in whatever agency they are found. Aside from the P25.24 billion congressional pork or PDAF, we identified at least P147.87 billion of presidential pork found off-budget (like the Malampaya account and the President’s Social Fund), P173.5 billion Special Purpose Funds, P83.87 billion Unprogrammed Funds, P280.78 billion unused appropriations pooled under DBM control, and P235.28 billion pork scattered in several agencies.

Our proposals include itemization of amorphous lump sums for greater transparency and their realignment for basic social services, substantial salary increases for government employees, and job creation. House Resolution 298 contains concrete proposals for realignment, such as doubled MOOE for public schools; addressing the shortages in facilities, classrooms, and teachers; restoration of budgets slashed from SUCs; and increased salaries and benefits for teaching and non-teaching personnel.

Aside from overhauling the national budget and the processes behind it, greater safeguards in the administration of public funds need to be installed. These include the abolition of Presidential discretion over off-budget accounts and transferring them to the general fund for public and congressional scrutiny and approval. This will comply with the constitutional mandate that all public funds should be spent only for public purposes, and that all government revenues should accrue to a single fund and scrutinized then paid out pursuant to appropriations made by Congress. We have filed bills to this effect concerning the Malampaya account and the remittances to the President of PAGCOR and PCSO earnings. Other significant reforms would entail reining in the President’s (1) power to impound (or not spend) appropriations made by Congress and (2) habit of centralizing large amounts under DBM control such as in the case of unobligated funds (National Budget Circular 541 issued by DBM in August 2012).

-------------------Representative Tinio earned his Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Literature from UP. Email him at rep.antonio. tinio@gmail.com.

12 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

THE JUDICIARY DEVELOPMENT FUND... continued from page 5 the Senate President for the Senate.

Same for the Civil Service Commission, the Comelec, the Commission on Audit, and so on.

But this applies to General Funds, meaning what is given in the budget from the Treasury. The JDF is a special fund. Special funds have special purposes.

Q. Is this similar to the pork barrel that is being criticized now?

Ang pork barrel kasi, from what I'm hearing now, it has evolved into a fund about which only one person can decide, right? It's like a lump-sum fund. This is being questioned kasi wala naman talagang formal definition siya—yung discretion na binibigay sa official on where it will go.

In a way, depende kasi kung paano ginagamit yung discretion na yan, eh.

Dun sa budget as created, the JDF is in a way discretionary. In a way.

But it is also, as I said earlier, limited by the 80-20 provision. For the 80 percent minimum, you still have to follow certain criteria. Although it's not written in the law, it's usually how you administer the fund. Like those with a salary grade of 25 will get higher than those with salary grade 18. And there's a specific limitation also in the use of the 20 percent equipment and facilities fund, because it should be confined to equipment and facilities of the court where the fees are collected.

So it’s very technical. To write an

article about it may be a bit difficult unless you put it in a graph showing where funds go and how they are collected. So if, say, the Makati RTC collects this much, you have to remember that maximum of 20 percent should go back there for equipment and facilities.

Is it being followed? I don't know.

I'm not looking at it because I'm concentrating on the [level of the] district right now, not at the national level.

Q. If one were to describe the JDF as the pork of the judiciary, would that be an accurate statement?

Who's saying it? Because if you say something in support of it, you’ll be criticized. You say something against it, you’ll be criticized. That's the issue

right now with the pork.

Q. So no matter what you say...

I think it falls on the part of those having discretion or authority over the funds to explain how the funds are being collected in order to avoid such criticisms.

Q. Is giving full authority to decide on the disbursements and expenditures of a certain fund to only one person a setup for corruption?

Hindi naman.

There may be more temptation, pero hindi naman siya setup for corruption. Kasi ang daming checks, eh. The budgetary process is open to scrutiny.

For the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC), we have minutes of the meeting [documenting] how the purchases, how the disbursements are being made.

May rules siya. Tapos may pre- and may post-audit ang COA. So ang daming checks.

Ang problema, bakit nakakalusot?

So pwedeng may kutsabahan. So now others are also saying that para hindi makalusot, lalagyan pa natin ng Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Sa loob-loob ko, eh kung hindi ka naman vigilant, kahit na anong ilagay mong check, ganon pa rin. Kung hindi ka matiyaga [magtingin]...

Q. So change should be systemic, instead of on a piecemeal, case-tocase basis?

Kasi reactionary ang style natin, eh, even in making policies. We only react.

When we have hearings in Congress, there are a lot of complaints from congressmen, because the complaints would come from the constituency.

So I tell the Committee Secretary and technical staff, we should have a system of rating the executive departments continued on page 17

A partial copy of the report on the JDF and Special Allowance for the Judiciary (SAJ) for the first quarter of 2013, submitted by the Supreme Court. A copy of the report can be downloaded from the Supreme Court's website at http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/pio/ accountabilityreports/.

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges “The Constitution provides in Section 14, Article VI the grounds of inhibitions and disqualifications for members of Congress. It provides as follows: No Senator or member of the House of Representatives may personally appear as counsel before any court of justice or before the Electoral Tribunals, or quasi-judicial and other administrative bodies. Neither shall he, directly or indirectly, be interested financially in any contract with, or in any franchise or special privilege granted by the Government, or any subdivision, agency, or instrumentality thereof, including any government-owned or controlled corporation, or its subsidiary, during his term of office. He shall not intervene in any matter before any office of the Government for his pecuniary benefit or where he may be called upon to act on account of his office.

“Appearance of the legislator is now barred before all courts of justice, regardless of rank, composition, or jurisdiction.

The disqualification also applies to the revived Electoral Tribunal and to all administrative bodies, like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Commission. Courts martial and military tribunals, being administrative agencies, are included.

“The purpose of the disqualifications is to prevent the legislator from exerting undue influence, deliberately or not, upon the body where he is appearing. The pressure may not be intended; normally, the appearance is enough, considering the powers available to the legislator which he can exercise to reward or punish a judge deciding his case or, in the case of the Electoral Tribunal, his close association with its members. This is the reason the prohibited appearance must be personal.

The lawyer-legislator may still engage in the practice of his profession except that when it comes to trials and hearings before the bodies above-mentioned, appearance may be made not by him but by other members of his law office.”

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EVOLUTION OF THE PORK BARREL SYSTEM IN THE PHILIPPINES... continued from page 3

ject only to the veto power of the President. The President may propose the budget, but still the final say on the matter of appropriations is lodged in Congress. The power of appropriation carries with it the power to specify the project or activity to be funded under the appropriation law. It can be detailed and as broad as Congress wants it to be.”

Ramos opened other avenues to strengthen his power base. In 1996, he restored the Public Works Fund, the School Building Fund, the Congressional Initiative Allocation or CIA, the El Nino Fund, and the Poverty Alleviation Fund.

CIAs as pork barrel version CIAs were not clearly provided in the GAA. Legislators were allowed

to insert certain amounts in the budget of government agencies (executive) with the approval of the House Speaker and the House Appropriations Committee. Legislators had a hand in directing the utilization of the CIAs which were mostly incorporated in the budgets of the departments of public works and highways, education, health, and interior and local government.

Monitoring the projects funded by the legislators’ pork barrel was not given due attention. Only the officials of the departments of finance, budget, the implementing agency and the lawmakers themselves would know the status of the funds. At one time, CIA was reported to run up to P28 billions.

The birth of PDAF During his installation as the country’s 13th president then Pres. Erap Estrada was quite emphatic on his stand on the pork barrel issue. In his inauguration speech (June 30, 1998) he said: “Government can provide basic services without the extra cost of pork barrel or kickback; roads for work; infrastructure for productivity; schools for skills; clinics for health; police for safety, and a

lean and mean military machine for national defense. This I promise and I will deliver. … Government cannot afford to give all the youth the complete education promised by the Constitution, but it would be a crime if any money for education was misspent on inferior textbooks and substandard classrooms built by pork barrel. …

I appeal to the coming Congress to search its conscience for a way to stand behind me, rather than against me, on the pork barrel issue and find a way to convert pork into tuition subsidies in the public and private schools.”

But during his short-lived two-year stay in power as president, Estrada did not entirely scrap the legislators’ discretionary funds. He retained the School Building Fund and still al-

was challenged. The Supreme Court in Sarmiento et al. vs. The Treasurer of the Philippines, et al. (G.R. No. 125680 and 126313, September 4, 2001) reaffirmed its previous ruling in 1994 (Philconsa vs. Enriquez) saying: “The Countrywide Development Fund attempts to make equal the unequal. It is also a recognition that individual members of Congress, far more than the President and their congressional colleagues, are likely to be knowledgeable about the needs of their respective consitituents and the priority to be given each project.”

In 2008, there was an initiative to safeguard and rationalize the use of the pork barrel allocation. Nograles and Lagman cited in their report Special Provision No. 1 under XLVI on Priority Development Assistance Fund (p.

950 of the GAA for 2008):

lowed the CIAs. But he also instituted his own version of the executive pork barrel fund called the Lingap para sa Mahirap. He introduced the Rural Development Infrastructure Fund (RUDIF), the same as the Public Works Fund, but with a P30M allocation for each congressman. However, the sole power to dispense “pork” to the legislators rested on the Executive.

A legislator had to beg for a share of RUDIF—a case of executive supremacy over the legislative. In 1999, the congressmen lobbied for a share of the huge executive pork barrel, Lingap para sa Mahirap Program Fund. They were able to get a share equivalent to 2/3 of the Fund. Estrada reintroduced the CDF, but renamed it the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF).

Under PDAF, at least on paper, the congressmen would identify projects from a narrow set of project categories determined by the Executive.

1. Use and Release of the Fund. The amount appropriated herein shall be used to fund priority programs and projects under the Ten-Point Legacy Agenda of the national government, and shall be released directly to the implementing agencies as indicated…”

The list includes projects on education, health, livelihood/CIDSS, rural electrification, water supply, financial assistance, public works, irrigation, peace and order, housing, forest management, and historical/arts/culture.

The Act also provides“…That in the procurement of common-use supplies, the implementing agencies shall adhere to the price list and the rules and regulations to be issued by the Government Procurement Policy Board…”

During the Arroyo administration, there were several cases of corruption that had their roots in the misuse and abuse of the pork barrel fund especially to perpetuate herself in power which rocked her administration on several occasions. Sen. Antonio Trillanes, for example, expressed his disappointment with the abuse of the pork barrel

PDAF during the Arroyo administration In 2001, with the assumption to the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo after the impeachment of Pres. Estrada, the PDAF was retained.

Again, the constitutionality of CDF

by the Arroyo administration.

PDAF under the PNoy administration PNoy kept the PDAF legacy, and even nurtured it. Before Pres. Arroyo stepped down, the last PDAF allocated in 2010 was P10.86B. This figure was doubled (P24.62B) during the first budget allocation of the PNoy presidency in 2011. Despite the prominent emphasis on the theme of his electoral campaign—“Kung walang kurap, walang mahirap”—until his inauguration as the 15th President whose inaugural speech centered on the theme, “Tungo sa daang matuwid,” the PNoy administration was not spared from the massive corruption scandal brought about by the glaring abuse of the pork barrel fund. In fact, although the issue started with the legislators’ pork barrel, the huge lump sum discretionary fund of the President and that of the Vice-President have also become a major issue that would make the legislators’ pork barrel fund scam pale in comparison.

The recent pork barrel scandal of P10B (the amount involved could be much much more) has rocked the nation and exposed the extent of the systemic nature of corruption and its various modalities in the various levels of government bureaucracy.

The demand for transparency and accountability was so potent as to draw millions of people to the streets demanding the rechanneling of the pork barrel allocation or the outright abolition of the pork barrel system.

Added to this is the latest scandal involving the unconstitutional Disbursement Acceleration Fund (DAF). With the ongoing government investigation and the progress of the plunder cases already filed against the initial list of accused legislators, every Filipino hopes for the restoration of transparency, accountability, decency, and rationalized use of peoples’ money as pillars in public governance and to breathe more life and meaning to the Constitutional provision that a “Public office is a public trust.”

-------------------Prof. Ruben M. Gamala is a faculty member at the UPV College of Management and director of the Office of Student Affairs. He earned his Master of Management from UP Los Baños and is currently pursuing his doctoral studies in public administration at the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance. Email him at sigebala@yahoo.com.

REFERENCES:

Tamayo, Adrian M. (2011, July 1). Pork barrel, Philippine politics and the e conomy. Philippine Democracy Online. Retrieved from http://philippine-democracy.blogspot. com/2011/07/pork-barrel-and-philippinepolitics-and.html Mangahas, Malou. (2013, July 21). Pork, lump sums, and President PNoy: Scam, no! PDAF a ‘mafia’ of executive and legislature.

Philippine development assistance fund scam. (n.d.). Wikipedia. Retrieved from http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_Development_ Assistance_Fund_scam Nograles, Prospero C. and Lagman, Edcel C. (n.d.) Understanding the pork barrel. House of Representatives.

Chua, Yvonne T. and Cruz, Booma. (2013, August 23). Pork by any name (from "The Rulemakers: How the Wealthy and Well-Born Dominate Congress, 2004"). VERA Files. Retrieved from http://ph.news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-inbox/ pork-name-140158329.html)

14 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

Celeste Ann Castillo Llaneta

Working the system “My answer, unfortunately, is no,” said Dr. Michael Tan, dean of the UP Diliman College of Social Sciences and Philosophy.

“The reason I’m pessimistic is that I believe—and this is one of the biggest problems we have—we are still held by the throat by a feudal system.”

This feudal system, which Tan described as “distorted,” acts as the matrix or framework that informs, influences, manipulates and controls all aspects of our society—from our individual thoughts, beliefs and behavior; to our Photo from Wikicommons

family structures and practices; our community and cultural traditions; our social, political and economic institutions; and ultimately, our national consciousness.

It is a mostly unconscious, largely unquestioned pattern of societal rules and roles, built up over hundreds of years of colonial experience and renewed generation after generation. It is through this feudal system, culturally and psychically embedded in us, that we create the kind of government that is creating the chaos we are railing against today.

As unnoticed as the nature of this system is, its workings are easy enough to spot if one observes closely. In explaining his answer to the question of whether or not we are ready for a porkless political system, Tan recalled the first Inquirer Conversations forum, launched by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on September 25.1 During the forum, Inquirer columnist Cielito Habito shared how a friend had complained about the furor over the pork barrel scam, saying: “Why all the fuss? The money had been spent anyway, yet why are they making all this noise?”2 This willingness to write off the billions stolen from public funds as an unfortunate yet somehow excusable loss “really got an outcry from the readers, but I’m afraid he’s not atypical,” said Tan. He himself had heard radio listeners and commentators express the same

Photo from http://www.senate.gov.ph/photo_gallery/gallery_view. aspx?q=gallery14_32

The Million People March, dubbed by some as the first massive rally in the country organized mostly through social media, did not end there. Anti-pork gatherings after August 26 included a prayer vigil dubbed “EDSA Tayo” on September 11 at the EDSA Shrine, another protest in Luneta on September 13, a rally with a noise barrage on September 21, and another on October 4 at Ayala Avenue, Makati City.

All in all, there appears to be no stopping the tide of frustration among ordinary citizens, nor their determination to hold corrupt officials accountable. The Million People March could almost be the Philippines’ Arab Spring or Occupy Movement—a mass movement intended to bring in a change in governance and to take a stand against social and economic inequality.

Almost. But in the midst of our anger at a level of corruption that scars the soul, a question arises: Are we really ready for a political system that does not lead to pork-ridden scandals?

views as Habito’s friend.

“The perception, unfortunately, is that the pork barrel helps the poor. What many people don’t know is it’s actually squeezed out of the poor. It’s squeezed out of us,” said Tan. “But [the pork is doled out] in such a way that [it allows] congressmen and senators to keep the people deceived— ‘Hey, we’re doing all these things for you.’ My impression from radio is niloloko pa rin sila. And then you have commentators, who are more middleclass, who also buy this nonsense that we are being helped by the pork barrel.”

Tan also fears that the anti-pork protest movement would eventually lose momentum and fade away, like many other reform movements in the past. Another probable scenario: the fall guys will be the staff, but the bigwigs themselves will manage to slip through the nets yet again. And another possibility: pork would be abolished only to rise again, wearing another form and carrying another name designed to keep the people from seeing how oppressive it is.

“I’m encouraged by the fact that the Inquirer is committed to keeping this [the pork barrel scam coverage] going.

This is very important, keeping it on the front page,” said Tan. “I’ll really start worrying if it goes to page 2 or page 3. But after the hearings in the Senate?

Baka mawawala na naman, and then the next flavor of the month will come around.”

Another possible reason the pork barrel protest movement could eventually stall is the lack of a viable alternative system or framework to replace the broken one we have.

“We still need some way to bring

UPDCSSP dean Dr. Michael Tan

people together beyond anger,” said Tan. “We’re all angry at this point, but if we look at this mainly as corruption and stop there, we won’t go far.” This, he added, was what had happened to the heady wave of nationalistic fervor following the anti-Marcos movement in 1986, which had stuttered and crumbled back into the old, entrenched patterns for lack of a concrete, long-term vision for the country.

“We need someone to come in and point out that it’s not just corruption.

It’s not just greed. It’s feudalism. This is where the Left needs to come in. If we want to use the national democratic jargon, it’s bureaucrat capitalism. It’s a whole system wherein politicians see government as a way to make money, where you come to look at a government position as a way to earn money. And adding insult to injury,” he added, “it’s a system where your skill is measured by the way you are able to deceive people into believing you are a good person.”

In other words, it is a system where Filipino terms such as “mabait,” and “magaling,” which are often meant as compliments, end up describing behavior directly opposed to ethical governance and genuine public service.

Photo from http://ph.news.yahoo.com/photos/who-s-who-in-pork-barrelhullabaloo-1379496766-slideshow/benhur-luy-the-whistleblower-of-thepriority-development-assistance-fund-pdaf-scam-raises-his-right-photo1379496688027.html

PHILIPPINE FEUDAL SOCIETY... continued from page 1

Noblesse oblige, Pinoy-style Manifestations of this feudal system can be seen among individuals and institutions, among sectors of the population, and in the poor and rich alike.

“A horrible part of feudalism is what psychologists call ‘learned helplessness,’ where you are told so often that you are convinced you cannot do something,” said Tan. “[The poor are always told that] they will never be able to do things on their own, that they have to rely on the good hearts [of our leaders and elite], and that is why they are so continued on page 15

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges Conflict of Interests. “The provisions in Section 12, Article VI of the Constitution are intended to ensure the probity and objectivity of the members of Congress.

“There are some persons who may be tempted to run for Congress not because of a desire to serve the people but precisely for the protection or even enhancement of their own interests. By requiring them to make known at the outset their financial and business connections or investments, it is hoped that their potential for self-aggrandizement will be reduced and they will be prevented from using their official positions for ulterior purposes. In some countries, businessmen are required to unload their stockholdings as these might affect their official acts or at least lead to suspicion of chicanery or impropriety in the discharge of their duties in the government.”

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 15

PHILIPPINE FEUDAL SOCIETY... continued from page 14

battle against littering in his college.

“When we say [to the students], collect your own trash and use the waste basket, the very common answer is: ‘What are janitors for?’ Yes, these are UP students. Look around: they leave their Styrofoam boxes here and there, they leave their trash in the classrooms.”

This sense of entitlement is not limited to those occupying the loftiest perches in society. Tan shared his own experience at a University Council Meeting: At the end of the meeting, he took up some of the food boxes that had been left behind to throw in the trash, only to be admonished by a faculty member who told him it wasn’t his job to clean up. Another common example: In the US, people eating at fast-food restaurants bus their own tables, while in the Philippines, fast-food patrons leave their used boxes, trays, wrappers and utensils on the table, because “what are waiters for?” Tan asked wryly.

“It’s very feudal. ‘Why must I pick up my own litter? People will pick up after me. It’s beneath me to do things like that.’ You can blame it on the yaya system. I heard foreigners say the yaya system will kill the Philippines, because ‘yaya is there naman, she will do it for us.” Taking this attitude to its logical extreme, we get people like Janet Napoles’ daughter and former military comptroller Carlos Garcia’s wife and sons, whose inflated sense of entitlement was nothing short of repulsive.

Parts of the whole Schools and universities often fall continued on page 18

Photos above and below from Wikicommons

ever grateful to the people who oppress them.”

Forces within the feudal system keep the poor shackled to their sense of helplessness, producing in them a deeply ingrained belief that they are beholden to the elite. Tan recounted his visit to Dapitan two years ago, where he went around asking people what they thought of former Zamboanga del Norte representative and convicted rapist Romeo Jalosjos.

“It was always the same answer: ‘Oo nga, hindi maganda yung ginawa niya, pero alam mo, mabait siya. Tinutulungan kami,’” he shared, referring to the peculiar dichotomy between the terms “mabait na tao” and “mabuting tao,” which do not necessarily mean the same thing. “People almost accept that, of course, there would be kickbacks.”

Even the way government programs are implemented serve to keep this poor-dependent-on-the-elite dynamic.

Citing Habito again, Tan retold the story of how the former economic planning secretary had gone to a remote farming community in Mindanao, and asked the people what they needed to develop.

Their answer was carabaos. But when he asked them what they kept getting from the government, their answer was fertilizers.

“Dr. Habito’s point is that there’s a mismatch between what people need and what we give them,” said Tan. “But as soon as he said ‘fertilizer,’ I immediately thought, of course, it’s always fertilizers. Government agencies insist on fertilizers, because that’s where the

kickback is. You can’t get much of a kickback from carabaos.”

This is the dark side of the Filipino value of “utang na loob” combined with a learned helplessness the size of a country—what Tan calls the “magpasalamat ka kay Mayor” attitude. He sees this at work in the health sector as well, where knowing which politicians to approach for financial aid and how to wriggle through the loopholes in the system have become survival skills.

“It’s strategizing, and there’s a lot of it. And this is because politicians created the system. Then they complain about it, saying, ‘Ang daming mahihirap ang pumupunta rito,’” said Tan. “But they created that system.

Why can’t we have the money directed toward the provincial hospital or in a good PhilHealth system instead?”

The feudal system creates large numbers of poor who believe they must rely on the scraps of the rich.

The rich are in turn obligated to provide said scraps for the poor—noblesse oblige is part of the rules of feudalism after all.

On the flipside, this system also creates an elite with a distorted sense of entitlement and an arrogance stemming from over-attachment to hierarchy and its perceived privileges. In the face of this unconscious sense of entitlement, personal responsibility and concern for the greater good often take a back seat.

To illustrate, Tan offers the continuing

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges “Under Section 13, Article VI of the Constitution, it states some other disqualifications by which a member of Congress may hold office, to wit: Sec. 13. No Senator or Member of the House of Representatives may hold any other office or employment in the Government, or any subdivision, agency, or instrumentality thereof, including government-owned or controlled corporations or their subsidiaries, during his term without forfeiting his seat. Neither shall he be appointed to any office which may have been created or the emoluments thereof increased during the term for which he was elected.

“The first part of this section refers to what are known as incompatible offices, which may not be held by the legislator during his tenure in Congress. The purpose is to prevent him from owing loyalty to another branch of the government, to the detriment of the independence of the legislature and the doctrine of separation of powers.

“The prohibition against the holding of an incompatible office is not absolute; what is not allowed is the simultaneous holding of that office and the seat in Congress. In the case of the rest of the legislators, any of them may hold another office or employment in the government provided he forfeits, as a result, his position in Congress.

“Forfeiture of the legislator’s seat, or cessation of his tenure, shall be automatic upon the holding of the incompatible office. Thus, a congressman who was elected provincial governor was deemed to have automatically forfeited his seat in the House of Representatives when he took his oath for the provincial office. No resolution was necessary to declare his legislative post vacant.”

16 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

Pork in LGUs Interview with Quezon City Representative Alfredo D. Vargas III and Barangay UP Chairperson Isabelita P. Gravides

Left: Rep. Alfredo D. Vargas III; right: Barangay Chairperson Isabelita P. Gravides

Fred Dabu

W

ith billions of pesos worth of Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) or “pork”— Filipino taxpayers’ money— allegedly released through cities, provinces and barangays, as reported by the Commission on Audit and national media from August to November 2013 at the height of the pork barrel scandal, UP FORUM asked first-term Representative Alfredo D. Vargas III (5th district, Quezon City) and incumbent Barangay Chairperson Isabelita P. Gravides (Brgy. UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City) their thoughts on the use of discretionary funds in the local government units (LGUs).

Barangay UP Chairperson Isabelita P. Gravides estimates the discretionary funds for Barangay UP for 2013 at around Php130,000. She said this amount was spent for useful projects that are not allotted for in the barangay development fund, such as feeding programs, seminars, and projects for senior citizens and other sectors. She also assured that all documents were submitted and that such funds were audited both

by COA and the city government.

“Official receipts, requests for allotment, vouchers, photos of activities and all required papers were attached in our report,” she said.

“Ever since ay nagko-comply ang ating barangay sa mga requirements. We have even been cited by three television networks as among the ‘best barangays’ in fiscal management,” Gravides said.

“Nung na-expose ang PDAF issue, naunawaan natin na dapat lang na mai-direct na lang sa LGU ang pondo para sa mga serbisyong pampubliko, hindi na dadaan sa Congress o Senate. At dapat iabolish ang pork barrel system,” Gravides said in support of the campaign of the UP multisectoral alliance.

She added that all those involved in the pork barrel scandal should be prosecuted. “No one should be spared, kahit kaalyado ng administrasyon,” she said.

Movie actor and first-term QC Representative Alfredo D. Vargas III shares his strategies for delivering services to his indigent constituents now that the PDAF has been abolished.

“In the House of Representatives, there’s no discretionary fund anymore. The Supreme Court has already ruled the unconstitutionality of the PDAF. I think it goes the same for local government units,” Vargas said.

As a former Quezon City councilor, Vargas perceived the use of discretionary funds as a means of addressing ‘parochial concerns’ and for them “to be able to reach out to the poorest of the poor in delivering social services that do not usually reach the grassroots.”

He said their constituents have requested and received projects for multipurpose halls, people participation mechanisms, consultations, projects for youth and senior citi-

zens, and for emergency response or disaster risk reduction management through such discretionary funds.

Vargas said their LGU fund was properly utilized and transparent.

“We submitted all the reports, complied with all the necessary requirements asked by COA. We followed all procedures for transparency and accountability, and submitted all the paperwork and requirements,” he assured.

“COA has a lot of staff. They have field officers, as well as the general services office, and they are the ones who make sure the funds are properly used. There’s also the accounting department. So, I think, if not quadruple, it is checked five, six times, or seven times. Sa butas ng karayom dumadaan ‘yon.

From my experience, when I was a councilor, the projects really helped address the needs of the poorest of the poor,” Vargas said.

Faced with discretionary funds removed from Congress, Vargas plans to be innovative in responding to requests for assistance and projects.

“I’ll just have to face the fact that the programs and projects will not be as available anymore to my constituents as they were before.

I’m going to be creative and look for public-private partnerships with my entrepreneur friends, with my friends who have big businesses and with other companies which practice corporate social responsi-

bility. And on a personal level, I’m going back to showbiz and accept some projects. A portion of my earnings will go to the needy, to the indigent constituents, specifically for their medical assistance. So, in short, sariling sikap ko talaga. Personal sacrifice,” Vargas said.

Vargas admits that requests for assistance from his constituents are overwhelming.

“For me, I had to use my savings, from what I’ve saved from my businesses and my career as an actor. I had to tap those personal resources because of the massive or overwhelming needs of the people. Even until now, especially now, kasi there’s no other source,” he said.

As for the senior legislators’ strategies to address the needs of their respective constituents, Vargas noted they may still have some amount left in their previous PDAF allocations. “With their PDAF for 2013, they are still able to help their constituents,” he said.

Vargas continues to receive overwhelming requests, mostly for medical and burial assistance.

“Hundreds ‘yan per week. But I am only able to help, out of the 100 to 150 a week, I can only help ten. Because that’s what I can do, that’s just how far I can go in terms of personal capacity. So, I’m only able to help around ten percent,” he said.

-------------------Email the author at forum@upd. edu.ph.

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 17

ROUND-TABLE DISCUSSION: DE VERA... continued from page 11 but this must be decided upon in full public debate, not just by politicians and bureaucrats in the executive and legislative branches of government.

The recent Supreme Court decision on the PDAF has put in place some of the reforms in the use of pork. Legislators now cannot be involved in the identification of, and amounts to be given for, projects in their district or any part of the country. Even before the SC decision, the House of Representatives required its members to submit a list of infrastructure projects (worth P25M) to be implemented in their districts in 2014. This list will be included in the proposed 2014 General Appropriations Act (GAA) and will be implemented by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). This reform is consistent with the SC decision and takes the form of “earmarks” in the US model of pork barrel.

This is possible for “hard pork” or infrastructure projects which can be pre-identified but impossible for “soft pork” such as scholarships or medical assistance for constituents. The PDAF allocation for scholarships and medical assistance has been put in CHED and DoH with a provision that there will be “consultation with the representative in the district”.

This violates the SC decision.

The CHED and the House of Representatives must now find creative ways to allow legislators to participate in the selection of beneficiaries.

Sixteen senators have decided to forego their P200M PDAF allocation and want it deducted from the proposed 2014 budget.

The question is—what happens to the other senators who want to continue receiving PDAF? How will this lump sum appropriation appear in the GAA? What would be the mechanism will be used in the implementation of this fund?

Will this mechanism be consistent with the SC decision?

Interestingly, the SC decision can now be used to question the pork barrel in local governments.

Local legislators enjoy broader and wider discretion in the use of pork compared to their counterparts in Congress. Control mechanisms are weaker at the local level, and NGOs and the media are not as active in monitoring public expenditures. It is about time that we look into the local government pork.

There are other reforms that need to be undertaken if we want

to make sure that public funds are used judiciously, effectively, and go to targeted beneficiaries.

One, we need serious and drastic reforms in our auditing system.

The Commission on Audit must immediately make public all audit reports in the past years, explain why some agencies and years were not audited, and penalize their personnel who failed to audit agency expenditures.

The knee jerk response of COA is to say that they lack the personnel. COA must now think out of the box and partner with private audit companies and associations like the Philippine Institute of Certified Public Accountants (PICPA) to effectively undertake its audit responsibilities. This is a standard practice in many developed countries and is allowed under the constitutional provisions creating the COA. Two, we must hold the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) accountable for their systems and procedures that allowed the Napoles NGOs to conduct business. These NGOs had the proper papers from SEC and accreditation from DA. The congressional hearings have identified these lapses.

People must now be held accountable and new systems have to be put in place.

Three, the DBM must also make public all the projects funded through DAP if it is true, as the

THE JUDICIARY DEVELOPMENT FUND... continued from page 12 implementing all these policies. We have to identify which ones [have problems that are] operational [in nature], and [which ones have problems] na policy talaga at kailangang amyendahan.

Because if we see that the problem is operational, at ang titirahin nating sagot ay policy, mali. So I tell them, we have three years, but in fact we only have two years to finish whatever legislative agenda for each committee would be. So huwag tayong magre-react. We have to be strategic.

Ganyan din sa JDF. If we’re not organized and careful in looking at the system, hindi mo makukuhang ganon pala yon. Di mo rin sya makikita na may problema pala.

May mga boxes yan, eh. Money comes in. Money comes out. Ano yung mga checks para pumasok siya nang tama? Ano yung mga checks para lumabas siya nang tama? Along the way, sino yung accountable officers? Sino yung overall accountable officer? Under the JDF law, it’s the Chief Justice.

agency claims, that these accelerated the economy. I know a lot of projects funded through DAP that were beneficial, implemented well, and were not accompanied by corruption allegation. But I do not know whether this is the same situation across agencies and regions. The piece-meal and “by installment” approach of showing beneficial projects funded from DAP does not allow for full public debate and the negative public perception on the DAP will continue.

Finally, we need serious budget reform in this country. The line item veto power of the President and the mechanism for automatic appropriations must be abolished because these unduly tilts the balance of power towards the executive branch, creates an imperial presidency, and creates fiscal irresponsibility among legislative and executive officials.

-------------------Dr. De Vera earned his Bachelor of Arts in History and Doctor of Public Administration from UP. Email him at deverajp@yahoo.com.

Q. So we need to make all the structures and processes of these departments and agencies clear and understandable.

Yes. Because with the FOIA, what you are asking for is transparency. Okay, let’s say you get it. O, ano ngayon? Linawin mo kung ano yung takbo niya. Sino ang accountable officer? Who is responsible for giving you the information? And if you do not master that—both on the part of the government agency and on the part of whoever is looking into that agency—magkakaroon kayo ng unnecessary away. "Bakit ka ba hingi nang hingi sa akin, eh hindi naman ako in-charge diyan?" sasabihin ng isa. Sasabihin naman ng kabila, "Tingnan mo mga ito.

Meron na ngang batas eh, hindi pa rin sumusunod." "Eh, hindi nga ako yung in-charge diyan, eh."

I mean, it should be very clear.

It's more of putting it on paper; it's more of understanding it, so you don’t bark up the wrong tree.

Q. In a recent interview, Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno said that there is no similar “pork barrel scam” in the judiciary.

Instead, she appealed for a bigger budget for the judiciary. What are your views about this?

Pwedeng iba-ibang point of view, eh. Maybe she was looking at it from the point of view na galing sa budget. Di naman galing sa special fund.

You also have to be specific.

You asked me about this, so I answered that this is my basis.

Wala naman sa General Appro-

priations Act na discretionary fund ito. Baka GAA yung iniisip niya. And if I understand it correctly, Chief Justice Sereno also said that they will be coming up with a website showing how the JDF is being utilized. So you have to look at it that way also— in a way, for administrators of the fund, whether it is the JDF or other funds, the bottomline is transparency. Where does the money go?

So maybe that's also her way of responding. Kasi generally kapag sinabi mong pork barrel fund, eh.

Unang-una, are you referring to the PDAF? Are you referring to the presidential discretionary fund?

Are you referring to the savings that are being used, also known as the DAP? Or are you referring to the JDF? It should be specific, kasi ang pork barrel, wala namang definition. Ang lumalabas na definition ngayon sa mga discussions is any lump-sum fund that only one person has the discretion of utilizing… and ginagamit ito for politicking or perpetuation of power or for power's sake. That is, abuse, which the people do not like.

Q. Do we need to amend or repeal PD No. 1949?

If you repeal PD No. 1949, eh di lalo lang silang mawawalan ng pera. If you amend it, tapos medyo restrictive yung amendments mo… then I think we really have to talk about it first. For me, given the dealings right now, masyadong intense yung exchanges. Magandang sa kanila [the judiciary] na manggaling, kung gusto nila ng amendments, in response to the demands of the public din.

Q. Does this contribute to the perception that our courts are ineffective, since with the lack of funds, justices and courts are more prone to corruption?

Remember, money isn’t like food. Ang pagkain, nakakabusog.

Ang pera, hindi. Kahit anong gawin mo, basta ang attitude nila [ay ganyan], hindi nabubusog talaga.

Q. Paano pabubusugin ang judiciary or any government agency?

[By improving their] quality of life. Equipment and facilities.

Computers. Good desks, good chairs. Then let them do their work.

And of course, look at their standard of living. Provide them shuttle buses to and from work, and so on.

Those are my humble suggestions.

Q. So all you have to do is...

Implement the law. I think [the problem is] more operational. It's more about dialogue.

-------------------Representative Fuentebella earned his BS in Business Administration in 1997 from UP Diliman.

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges “The constitutional prohibition against a member of the Batasang Pambansa from holding any other office or employment in the government during his tenure is clear. Section 10, Article VIII of the 1973 Constitution provides as follows: Sec. 10. A Member of the National Assembly shall not hold any other office or employment in the government or any subdivision, agency or instrumentality thereof, including government-owned or controlled corporations, during his tenure, except that of prime minister or member of the cabinet. Xxx “The language used in the above-cited section is plain. The only exceptions mentioned therein are the offices of prime minister and cabinet member. The wisdom or expediency of the said provision is a matter which is not within the province of the Court to determine.”

18 UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013

Image taken from the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee Presentation by the Department of Budget and Management

PHILIPPINE FEUDAL SOCIETY... continued from page 15 short of bridging the gap between our aspirations and our feudal reality. Perhaps no university is as painfully aware of this as UP, which had to face its own scandal at the height of the pork barrel scam protests when 22-year-old UP Masters in Public Administration student Mark Solis was found to have been passing off photographs by professionals as his own in photography competitions. Reflecting on the two breaches in ethics—one deed committed by an elder senator and the other by a young graduate student—UP sociology Professor Emeritus Randy David wrote in his Inquirer column dated September 25:3 “The question that rushed to my mind was: Where do young people like Mark Joseph Solis learn their ethics? My suspicion is that they don’t. They witness the collapse of traditional morality in their elders and leaders, and soon they are led to believe that anything goes in the quest for success, power and wealth. Skeptical of the legal system, and lacking any guidance, they begin to view the world with the cold eyes of predators that must prevail at any cost.”

Adding salt to the wound is the fact that both Solis and the most senior senator of the pork barrel Big Three are

products of UP. “We like to boast about how we produced most of the presidents, but the fact is, we also produced the most corrupt president, so could it be [there is] this lack of an ethical and moral compass because we presume that it will come naturally, and it doesn’t?”

Tan wondered.

In a country whose population is 80 percent Catholic, it is second-nature to look to the Church for the ethics we desperately need. However, studies4 have shown that corruption levels are greater in Catholic countries5 than in Protestant countries.6 Even in the European Union, Catholic countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Spain have needed more bailouts than their Protestant counterparts.

University of California political scientist professor Daniel Treisman described the possible factors behind the Catholic Church’s tendency to foster corruption, in contrast to Protestantism. First of all, the Catholic Church is less tolerant of challenges to authority, individual dissent and threats to social hierarchies, which makes it less likely to discover and punish abuses. The Catholic Church also places more emphasis on the inherent weakness and sinfulness of human beings and the need for the Church to be forgiving and protecting, while Protestants focus on personal responsibility for avoiding sin. Another is the Catholic Church's focus on the fam-

ily rather than the individual, which can lead to "amoral familism" and nepotism.

Lastly, it has been observed that in Protestant countries, separation of church and state is more pronounced.7 These then are replicated in our political system, with disastrous effects. This is why “I’m so happy with Pope Francis, because in one of his statements, he said a priest should not be a bureaucrat,” Tan said. “Because that’s what happens precisely in the confessional”—a bureaucratic approach to sin, where a penance consisting of a few repeated prayers wipes the slate clean, with little thought to consequence, personal accountability or reparation.

In exploring the roots of our feudal system, Tan also recommends looking through the lenses of history and gender.

He recounts a recent National Academy of Science and Technology symposium on women and politics, where UP political science professorial lecturer Dr. Olivia C. Caoili said that gender discrimination sometimes affects the political system in ways we do not realize.

“She pointed out something very interesting: The scams happen because you have male politicians who leave the work to their female subordinates—the chief of staffs or secretaries,” he said. “They never check where the money goes, and that is a replication of the system where the men have always dominated in politics. Instead, Napoles would not have

gotten away with [her scams] if not for this male lack of oversight.”

This is the Filipino practice wherein the man leaves the management of the budget to his wife, played out in national government. The women, unable to find jobs, earn money or gain decisionmaking power on a truly equal level as the men, have learned to find ways to subvert and manipulate the powers that be, to find other means and channels to get what they need.

“The men are kampante,” said Tan. “They were content to leave the dirty work [to the women]. People always say that in the Philippines, men and women are equal because men give their money to the women. Actually, it’s based on a view that money is dirty and men have better things to do, so they just leave household management to their wives.

It’s the same thing with these politicians.”

There were statistics to back up Dr. Caoili's assertion. “At that symposium, Prof. LaRainne Sarmiento of the anthropology department had statistics showing that women only occupy 18 percent of elective positions.” Deprived of legitimate political power, women have learned, in that short period of time since they gained the right to vote in the 1930s and facing both class and gender discrimination, to take what they can get and make it work for them—and often continued on page 19

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges Privilege of Speech and Debate: Bases include: Constitutional Basis and Rules of the Senate. “Members of Congress cannot be prosecuted for any words spoken in debate or in connection with voting or used in written reports or with things generally done in a session of either House in relation to the business before it. This protection is extended to them during the session on the occasion of the exercise of their functions either in their respective chambers or in joint assembly, or in committees or commission. The purpose of this privilege of speech or debate is not to protect the members against prosecutions for their own benefit but to enable them as representatives of the people to execute the functions of their office without fear of prosecution, civil or criminal.”

UP FORUM Volume 14 No. 4 July-August 2013 19

PHILIPPINE FEUDAL SOCIETY... continued from page 18 doing it brilliantly.

“They are very good at looking for ways to get around the rules. It took a woman to think of creating all these layers and layers of NGOs.” Tan remembers going to a community once and being introduced to the mayora, who turned out to be the wife of the mayor, not the mayor herself. “Mayora is a very common term. If you are the wife of the mayor, you are the mayora, and you are as powerful as the mayor. But you are behind the scenes. Just as Napoles was behind the scenes,” he said. “So women have learned to scheme, to be the power behind the thrones.”

A woman as the power behind the throne brings up the specter of Imelda Marcos as Lady Macbeth. But Tan cautions against such stereotyping, which misses the point. The Philippines has had two women presidents, each with differing legacies. A historical and gender analysis of Filipino women in politics, perhaps by the UP Center for Women’s Studies, will yield more insights about how women make it work, and how they affect our government and political systems.

Rage against the machine It is easy for us to feel outraged when faced with the corruption, arrogance and gross incompetence we see in the pork barrel scams. It is much harder to see this same corruption, arrogance and willful avoidance of self-knowledge operating in our daily lives, in our interactions with our families and communities, in our local governments, schools, churches and work organizations. No amount of silver bullets aimed at the most offensive branches can eliminate the feudal system in whose roots we are caught. What then can we do as a society?

“We need people to keep reminding Filipinos of the bigger picture, always,” Tan said. “[We need to be reminded] that these [scams] are not just individual acts, but that these individuals are products of the system as well. In a way, we

create them, we create the conditions for them to do what they do.”

Like a physical organism, the feudal system will defend itself from those seeking to destroy it. One of its defenses is forgetfulness. “In a way, we forget too easily,” Tan said. “It’s because we are made to forget. There are forces that make us forget.”

The rewriting of the history of Martial Law is one such example, and Tan has encountered people who believe that Martial Law was declared by the Japanese—precisely why the UP CSSP insists on having anniversaries of Martial Law. Mathematicians, accountants and even physicists such as Dr. Giovanni Tapang and his students can help make the jungle of numbers more understandable to the public, and so informing us just how many schools, hospitals, houses, roads and jobs could have been generated out of the money pocketed by corrupt politicians. Constant reminders of the bigger picture, the connecting web, and the collective dream of a better country can counter this fog of distraction and forgetfulness—and each one of us has a part to play.

We also need an inclusive national history that respects and embraces all of our ethno-linguistic groups and sectors, including women and men. A strong, ethical mooring, such as those demonstrated by Scandinavian and the Japanese governments, is also essential.

Teaching ethics to our young people is arguably the educational sector’s most critical function—something UP, as national university, is well aware of. “We need to bring it into the curriculum, and in a way that won’t be abstract,” said Tan. “We are planning now for 2016, and in the General Education Council

ERRATUM In Stephanie S. Cabigao's article on the "Health Impacts of Climate Change: The Case of Dengue and Malaria," which appeared on page 20 of the UP Forum May-June 2013 issue on climate change, the word dermatological in the fifth and seventh paragraphs of the article should read "climatological." We apologize for the error.

of the UP System, we have actually recommended that ethics be one of eight required courses, and that it should be ethics taught in a very practical way, in relation to personal lives as well as the national.”

As for the K-12 curriculum, Tan mentioned that there is a proposal to include a philosophy course on ethics in grade 11 or 12. “We, who are going to be asked to help review, will make a very

the public coffers “could have supported the entire UP system for I don’t know how many years. And then we are made to beg [for our budget]. So yes, we have lots of blind spots” that we must be aware of.

Still, Tan would like to hope that the country would eventually break free of its feudal chains, and that there is already movement in that direction.

“For instance, I did not expect that there would be a strong anti-dynasty movement coming from young people in the last elections. That gave me hope. Maybe the whistle-blowers [in the pork barrel scam], too.

That there were people who were benefitting from [the system] who stood up [for truth], who were not politicians and were very sincere and spontaneous—that should give us hope.”

-------------------Email the author at forum@upd.edu.ph.

NOTES:

1 Sabillo, Kristine Angeli.

(2013, September 25).

Inquirer starts ‘Conversations’ on pork barrel. Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from http:// newsinfo.inquirer.net/494689/ inquirer-starts-conversationon-pork 2 Yap, DJ. (2013, September 26). Inquirer conversations: ‘Sustain the outrage to logical conclusion’. Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer. net/495307/sustain-the-outrage-to-logicalconclusion 3 David, Randy. (2013, September 25). Public lives: 'Calidad Humana.' Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from http://opinion. inquirer.net/61979/calidad-humana 4 Gathura, Gatonye. (2013, July 10). Graft more common in Catholic strongholds, new survey finds. Standard Digital. Retrieved from http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?a rticleID=2000088017&story_title=studycatholics-more-prone-to-graft-than-otherreligious-groups 5 Patel, Aakar. (2011, January 14). The new corruption meter [how does religion affect a nation's level of corruption?]. Free Republic.

Retrieved from http://www.freerepublic.com/ focus/f-religion/2657048/posts 6 Treisman, Daniel. (2000, June). The causes of corruption: A cross-national study. Journal of Public Economics, 76(3), 399-457.

Retrieved from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ polisci/faculty/treisman/Papers/causes.pdf 7 Treisman, Daniel. (2000, June). The causes of corruption: A cross-national study. Journal of Public Economics, 76(3), 399-457.

Retrieved from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/ polisci/faculty/treisman/Papers/causes.pdf

strong case for having ethics in senior high school. Maybe college would be a bit too late,” Tan commented dryly.

Finally, the one critical ingredient to creating a society that can produce a porkless political system is consistency—that is, the willingness to keep true to the values of honor, integrity, personal responsibility and public spiritedness in every aspect, from the individual to the institutional to the societal. This requires a measure of self-consciousness and discipline that can be daunting enough to a person, and near impossible to a government institution entrenched in feudalism.

“At the UP level, we [must ask] how we might clean up our own back yard.” Tan pointed out that even UP benefits from the pork barrel system, for example, through the “donations” of politicians in the form of scholarships or infrastructure. Tan wonders why such funds must come through a politician’s pork and not just directly from the UP budget. The billions siphoned off from

Senate Qualifications, Responsibilities and Privileges “[T]he courts may annul any expulsion or suspension of a member that is not concurred in by at least two-thirds of the entire body or any suspension meted out by the legislature, even with the required two-thirds vote, as to any period in excess of the 60-day maximum duration. These are procedural matters and therefore justiciable.

“But the interpretation of the phrase ‘disorderly behavior’ is the prerogative of Congress and cannot as a rule be judicially reviewed. The matter comes in the category of a political question. Accordingly, the Supreme Court did not interfere when the legislature declared that the physical assault by one member against another, or the delivery of a derogatory speech which the member was unable to substantiate, constituted ‘disorderly behavior’ and justified the adoption of disciplinary measures.

“Other disciplinary measures besides expulsion and suspension are deletion of unparliamentary remarks from the record, fine, imprisonment and censure, sometimes called ‘soft impeachment.’”

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UP-ADMU-MIRIAM COLLEGE JOINT STATEMENT... continued from page 1 years that the three Katipunan campuses joined forces in protest. The last demonstration of this nature occurred in 2003, which was a protest against the Iraq war.

Miriam College Vice President for Development and Resource Management Rose O. Bautista delivered the statement during the rally proper.

The Joint Statement can also be accessed at the UP System website (http://www.up.edu.ph/joint-statement-on-the-misuse-ofpublic-funds/).

Joint Statement on the Misuse of Public Funds We, the Presidents of the Ateneo de Manila University, Miriam College, and the University of the Philippines, join our faculty, staff and students in their deep concern about, and condemnation of, the misuse of public funds by unscrupulous government officials and their conniving associates. We stand in unity with a keen desire to end the deeply entrenched culture of graft, corruption and patronage in our political system.

We assert that accountability, transparency and other principles of good governance require not only the prudent use of discretionary funds but also the assurance that public funds are used for the genuine needs of our people.

We strongly urge our national leaders from the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government to re-examine their use of discretion in the allocation and use of public funds, to probe into the deeper roots of the pork barrel scam, and to address in particular the culture of corruption that destroys ourselves and our communities, especially the poor.

We express our deep gratitude to all those who, driven solely by pure motives and love of country, participated in the “Million People March” all over the country for their courage, vigilance, and leadership in spearheading the new moral revolution against corruption in our country. We join their voices and demands to open all government records for public scrutiny and punish all those involved in the misuse of public funds.

We ask that the institutions tasked by law to ensure accountability in the public service, such as the Ombudsman, Sandiganbayan, Civil Service Commission, Commission on Audit, Department of Justice, and the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, expedite their investigations and immediately file the appropriate cases against public officials involved in corruption. No effort must be spared to ensure that those accountable for these crimes be punished at the soonest possible time.

We support the call for greater re-channeling of public funds to basic social services, particularly education and health care, so that public investments promote inclusive growth and long-term human and social development.

We call on our faculty, staff, students, and respective academic institutions, as well as those of other colleges and universities, to analyze the various issues related to corruption and public accountability, such as the extent of discretion exercised by government officials in the use of public funds, the implementation of projects, the public accounting system, and public budgeting; and to discern from this analysis the solutions that are actionable and sustained. We call on you to mobilize and participate in activities that will allow for greater discussion of accountability, such as classroom discussions, forums, and mass actions.

By these actions, may we, as institutions of higher learning, continue to do justice to the values that we hold dear— “service of a faith that does justice”; “truth, justice and peace”; and “honor and excellence” —in the service of true participation in nation building.

Jose Ramon T. Villarin, SJ President Ateneo de Manila University

Rosario O. Lapus President Miriam College

Alfredo E. Pascual President University of the Philippines

1 Aquino, Patricia. "Just the beginning, say Ateneo, Miriam and UP students at anti-pork protest." Interaksyon. 11 September 2013: n. page. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.interaksyon.com/article/70530/just-the-beginning-say-ateneo-miriam-and-up-students-at-anti-pork-protest>.