Thieves and stewards
Critics of President Benigno Aquino III compared his national address on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) to the speech of the late US President Richard Nixon, who responded to the Watergate scandal with his now infamous line, “I am not a crook.”
That was before the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s headline quoted President Aquino saying in Filipino “I am not a thief.”
Two of the three senators implicated in the pork barrel controversy, Senators Ramon Revilla, Jr. and Jinggoy Estrada also said as much.
While there is no irrefutable evidence linking the President to wide-scale corruption or proof that he benefited from it—though his critics point to his allies as main beneficiaries—the Wednesday TV address was seen as a desperate, even off-tangent defense of a fund impounding mechanism that is still considered a pork barrel.
But as the country’s Chief Executive, doesn’t President Aquino have the responsibility of implementing programs that he pledged to his constituents aside from those listed in the national budget?
This is the argument of his allies, who say the President should be given leeway in using savings of various departments to disburse funds as he sees fit for programs that need large budgets owing to their importance and nature, especially during national emergencies like the Bohol earthquake and the floods.
National agencies like the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) that take charge of aid allocation, and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) all take orders from the President, who has other agencies under his command.
Allocating funds to win the support of both allies and opposition is an age-old political practice.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo used budget impounding like an art.
The issue is not about having the fund per se but the dangerous combination of control, entitlement, lack of transparency and lack of foresight by another branch. This is a temptation too juicy to resist.
Abolishing the DAP and other programs that smell of pork barrel is the only way to enforce full accountability and transparency.
The magnitude of funds at the disposal of the President without going through Congress is just too tempting.
Aquino may be in “matuwid na daan” but what if he digresses or another President of less sensitive moral standards uses it?
Let’s follow the wisdom of the Constitution and let the legislature and executive branch act as each other’s check-and-balance.
This starts with the agreed practice of identifying and listing all lump sum appropriations for all to see and reverting pork barrel funds to national government agencies.
We say no to pork barrels of congressmen, with the same vehemence we say no to the discretionary pooled funds for the President.
