Today is the day. Today the prayer rally against the pork barrel will be held on Edsa, site of two glorious People Power movements that toppled two Philippine presidents and that have been replicated in other countries, particularly in the Middle East where one is now raging in Syria.
The prayer rally may not be as big as the Million People March at the Luneta late last month as it is being held on a weekday, not during a weekend, and coincides with the birth anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator that the first People Power deposed. Some people think that the prayer rally may just be an activity in aid of the presidential ambition of Bongbong Marcos (which would be ironic considering that Bongbong is one of the six senators identified in a new report by the Commission on Audit as having links with the bogus NGOs of pork barrel queen Janet Lim-Napoles). But go to the prayer rally anyway to show your support for the antipork movement.
If too few people go there, the thieves in and out of government would be ecstatic and emboldened and steal more. “See?” they would say. “The Million People March was just ningas-cogon. The people have already calmed down. They will soon forget, and our happy days will be here again.”
But let us not forget and let us not let our guard down. This is our last chance to get rid of the hated pork barrel that has been sucking the blood out of us taxpayers. Go to Edsa today.
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The defense of the senators linked to the pork barrel scam is pathetic. “I do not know Janet Lim-Napoles, I never met her” is the usual excuse. Confronted with their signatures on official documents assigning their pork allocations to Janet’s NGOs, they cry: “Forgeries!” Or: “I do not recall that. Let me check.” Ho hum.
You were assigned millions of pesos that you gave to NGOs and you “do not recall” any of it? Don’t you check how much pork you still have and where the rest of it went? Is it that easy for shysters to forge documents and signatures and steal billions of pesos of the people’s money? What happened to the government’s “strict” security measures?
It has become clear that it is so easy to steal the people’s money. The alleged
P10-billion Napoles pork scam is the only one discovered so far. There may be many others still to be uncovered.
It is not only the lawmakers who have pork. Cabinet members, officials of local government units, and yes, the President, they all have their own pork. It is even easier for LGU officials to steal pork. They have the sole discretion to spend the funds. And they are not subject to any special audit as the COA has done on the lawmakers’ pork.
Which is why all lump-sum appropriations should be abolished, with the exception of the Calamity Fund. (We cannot foresee calamities and therefore cannot prepare itemized budgets for them.) We should go back to line-item budgeting. It was Ferdinand Marcos who started lump-sum appropriations with a presidential decree during martial law so he could spend funds more freely. If that decree were repealed by the present Congress, won’t that mean that we will have to go back to line-item budgeting?
We should also go back to the preaudit system. The present postaudit system is almost useless. By the time the auditors find illegal expenditures, the money is gone. Even if the culprits were made to refund their expenditures, it is doubtful whether they would, or could.
The money would have already gone to houses and condos and luxury cars (whose ownership would be in other people’s names to make it difficult to trace) and for travels to other countries and luxuriating in the most expensive hotels.
But with a preaudit system, illegal use of the money would be stopped before it is done.
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Nur Misuari and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) now know how to attract the government’s attention—start violence, attack villages, take hostages. The government took notice of the Muslims’ grievances only when the MNLF launched its independence movement and forged a peace agreement with it.
Then a splinter group formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and continued the rebellion, so the government held peace talks with it and forgot the peace accord with the MNLF. Now a splinter group of the MILF, the faction led by Umra Kato, is also continuing the attacks. Will the government also hold peace talks with it?
Misuari has a reason to feel aggrieved. Although he was pampered earlier by the government, he has now been forgotten. The peace accord has been forgotten. All the attention is focused on the MILF because it is the group that is making trouble. So Misuari has decided to make trouble, too. And he has gotten government attention.
Now government mouthpieces are scrambling to assure the MNLF that the peace accord has not been forgotten and that, in fact, “there is an ongoing tripartite review of the process of implementation of the peace pact [with the MNLF] through the facilitation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,” according to President Aquino’s spokesperson Edwin Lacierda. Really? Why has the government not informed the MNLF and the people about it earlier? Why only now that the Zamboanga hostage-taking is roiling the whole of Mindanao?
The government thought that Misuari’s MNLF is a spent force and that Nur is just an angry old man rattling his saber. They thought wrong. If you were the MNLF, you can’t help but ask: What will happen to us when another peace accord is signed with the MILF? A good question.