Benefits from abolishing pork

Putting a stop to the pork barrel will achieve the following benefits:

1. President Aquino will thereby show that he means business with his “daang matuwid” policy of governance.

2. Candidates for Congress will henceforth come from those motivated solely by the desire to serve the country, with no intention of enriching themselves in office. Then and only then will those who believe themselves to be capable of being legislators, without having to go through crash courses to function as such, will aspire to become members of Congress.

3. Candidates for Congress will henceforth limit their vote-buying and other election expenses as the use of the pork barrel to recover those expenses will be a thing of the past. This will result in cleaner elections in the future, and the electoral process will thereby be improved.

4. The intended end-beneficiaries of the pork barrel can receive the benefits directly from the executive without feeling obliged to “pay back” politicians in their desire to perpetuate themselves and their relatives in office.

5. The incumbent legislators who will be disappointed or prejudiced by the abolition of the pork barrel will have learned the lesson that all public officials need to internalize once and for all that public office is, in fact, a public trust.

—JUAN J. DIAZ,

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