?WITH CONGRESS, every time they make a joke, it?s a law,? Will Rogers joshed. ?And every time they make a law, it?s a joke.?
Did the House of Representatives joke in picking Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Marcos as chair of the ?little-known? Millennium Development Goals committee?
Few of 268 congressmen recall that in 2000 the Philippines and 191 UN members pledged to meet eight MDG goals. These included tamping down poverty, ignorance and penury. Forty-eight indicators would gauge achievement by 2015.
We?ll flunk MDG yardsticks for maternal death rates, universal primary education and poverty reduction. MDG goals were under-funded by P95 billion, estimates Rosario Manansan of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies.
Only 85 out of 100 kids complete primary grades. Out of every 1,000 births, 162 mothers die. There are 4.6 million families who live below $1.25 per day.
Mothers dying at childbirth or school dropouts are largely invisible. ?Out of sight, out of mind.? But congressmen can run fingers through pork barrel cash.
Ask minority Representatives Milagros Magsaysay (Zambales), Augusto Syjuco (Ilo-ilo), Elmer Panotes (Camarines Norte) and Danilo Suarez (Quezon), whose five-minute claim to fame is picking up the $15,000 steak dinner tab for the Arroyos at Bobby Van?s Steak House in Washington, DC.
Release P20-million pork barrel slabs, they badgered Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson. They tacked on another request: ignore President Aquino?s order prohibiting the use of his name and photo on public projects. Exempt us. Kaniya-kaniyang diskarte, Syjuco said without blinking.
P-Noy earlier refused to deploy wang-wang (sirens) to slice through traffic. He used example to teach against exploiting public projects for self-adulation. ?Teachers open the door,? a Chinese proverb says. ?You enter by yourself.?
The minority congressmen slammed the door. Was this merely a nasty habit that today?s minority inherited from the Arroyo regime?
From Malacañang, Arroyo stapled her picture on every project within reach. Taking credit for projects is ?a form of transparency and accountability,? Magsaysay claimed. Like the House whitewashing of rigged contracts for World Bank-funded roads? ?The worst form of hypocrisy is to call evil good.?
?Instead of constructing basketball courts or waiting sheds that no one uses,? Social Watch Philippines co-convener Leonor Briones proposed that legislators apply their pork to MDG goals. Use it to address extreme poverty, cut child mortality and get children back into school.
P-Noy?s first budget is pegged at P1.645 trillion, given huge deficits racked up by the Arroyo regime. It earmarks P22.3 billion for pork. This is small change. But applied to MDGs, it would improve the lives of millions of poor Filipinos.
?We may have to cram 15 years of development efforts into five years,? says Jacqueline Badcock, UN resident coordinator. ?MDGs are inter-related goals. They cannot be fully achieved separately.?
Tell that to Imelda Marcos. As chair of the House committee on MDGs, she must convince the House to think of the deprived?for once. It will not be easy.
Hong Kong police earlier arrested Rep. Ronald Singson. The Ilocos Sur congressman has denied being a drug ?mule.? Speaker Sonny Belmonte was puzzled when Rep. Ruben Ecleo of Dinagat Island appeared in the House instead of the courts in Cebu. He faces charges of murdering his wife Alona. But he has avoided jail, through five judges, on doctor?s claims of ?serious coronary disease.?
The House has a clutch of decent members. Quezon Rep. Erin Tañada is cut from the cloth of nationalist Sen. Lorenzo Tañada. Former Speaker Prospero Nograles is a pygmy beside Belmonte. Nonetheless, the House remains a body where the only currencies traded are cash or clout.
Thus, members scramble for committees like ways and means (Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas), national defense (Muntinlupa Rep. Rodolfo Biazon) and good government and public accountability (Batanes Rep. Dina Abad).
Ironically, the ?orphans? are committees that involve the nation?s deepest concerns. Science for example is the cutting edge for any nation?s advance. Look at Israel, Singapore, China or the US. So the House dumped the science and technology committee on a perennial truant, Negros Occidental Rep. Jules Ledesma. He responded to only three of 50 House roll calls. Scientists working on, say, heat tolerant rice or the threatened Coral Triangle, don?t need a deadbeat.
Can Imelda Marcos hack it? ?Put yourself in the shoes of Imelda Marcos,? suggests Jonathan Watts of the Guardian. ?As one of the world?s 10 richest women, she was intimate with dictators. She owned arguably the biggest private collection of art?and footwear?on the planet. Today, you?re a widow, garlanded with corruption charges and ridiculed across the globe as a by-word for extravagance and bad taste. Many of your shoes have been confiscated. And if that?s not enough, you have gained as many extra pounds as years. What would you do??
In a pre-77th birthday interview with Time magazine, Imelda gave an inkling of what she could do. ?People say I?m touched in the head,? she said. ?But I?ll come up with a project that will wipe out poverty in two years.?
She never did that with the do-nothing Marcos Foundation. Will she do that with the little-known House committee on MDGs?
?Promises cost nothing,? the parliamentarian Edmund Burke said. As congressmen have shown, hypocrisy can afford to be magnanimous with promises.
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Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com
