Here are follow-ups to two columns on the pork barrel of Quezon City councilors (“QC councilors have P40-M pork each,” 9/16/13) and why Janet Lim-Napoles should talk now (“Napoles should talk now to ensure her safety,” 9/27/13).
Unknown to many, most of all to QC taxpayers, QC councilors have had, for many years now, their own pork barrel to the tune of P40 million a year each. With 36 QC councilors, that totals to P1.4 billion that the QC taxpayers have to shoulder every year just to make 36 parasites happy. I am surprised why the reporters covering QC Hall missed that story. It is a good sidebar to the raging pork barrel scam scandal.
In a letter to the Inquirer last Sept. 28, city administrator Victor Endriga said that the councilors’ pork has been removed from the 2014 QC budget. But that means the councilors will continue to get their pork until the end of May 2014, the end of the current fiscal year. The 2014 fiscal year begins on June 1, 2014. This means the taxpayers stand to lose about P500 million more. Because of the current uproar against the pork barrel, QC Mayor Herbert Bautista should follow the example of Congress and the Supreme Court: He should order his treasurer to immediately stop all releases of pork allocations to councilors.
But how can he do that when the QC council just gave him his own pork: P36 million to be used, allegedly, to buy the mayor’s Christmas gifts? That is patronage politics, pure and simple.
Mind you, QC councilors have been getting their pork barrel for many years now: during the double terms of Mayor Mel Mathay and Mayor Sonny Belmonte, and during half the term of Bautista. What have the councilors done to their yearly billion-peso pork barrel allocations during all those years? If those many billions were spent for QC projects—not even including the hundreds of millions more of pork for QC congressmen—the city would be a beautiful one by now, a “clean well-lighted place,” in the words of Ernest Hemingway, instead of being the squatter capital of the Philippines.
Imagine what those billions of pesos could have achieved if they were used for meaningful projects instead of having been stolen? At P1.4 billion a year times 15 years, that totals to P19 billion. Wow! That could have provided all the squatters in the capital, named after a president who started the planning for the future capital of the Philippines, with their own homes.
And what is the QC government doing with the billions of pesos in “housing tax” it collects from property owners? The QC council has added the 5-percent housing tax to the regular real estate tax allegedly to be used to build houses for squatters. It has been more than three years since City Hall started collecting the tax, but until now not a single hollow block of the planned houses for squatters has been set in place.
* * *
The follow-up to the Napoles column is this: Janet Lim-Napoles’ lawyer, Lorna Kapunan, said that Janet is willing to tell all, but not in the Senate “carnival.”
The column stated that Janet understandably fears for her life because of what she knows and the number of very powerful people she can bring down with her. Naturally, some of her partners in crime would want to see her dead so she cannot blab about their participation in the P10-billion pork barrel scam.
But if she talks now and puts her testimony on record, there would be no use for her partners to silence her. They would only be adding murder to the string of cases they are already facing, with no benefit to them. Janet’s testimony would already be on record and will stay even if Janet herself were assassinated. So the sooner she talks, the safer she should feel. Besides, a clean conscience always puts an individual at ease. Janet is, understandably, very stressed now, but by telling everything now, no matter who gets hurt, she would cleanse her conscience and the stress would go away.
The column said that an acquittal, as she undoubtedly hopes, is out of the question. A mob of very angry citizens would lynch her—along with the judge or justices who would acquit her. The best that she can do is to bargain for a lighter sentence in exchange for her testimony. The column added that to serve her best, her lawyers should work for a plea bargain.
The day after that, Kapunan told the Inquirer that her client is “willing to tell all,” but not to the Senate, only to the Ombudsman. So what are they waiting for? Take Janet to the Ombudsman ASAP so she can unburden herself and get this thing settled once and for all.
* * *
The other day, the Court of Appeals sounded the death knell to experiments on Bt talong, the attempt to produce a pest-resistant variety of eggplant through biotechnology. The court said the effect of the new breed of eggplant on the environment is still unknown, so better to stop the experiment until there is more information on it.
Actually, the appeals court may be wrong there. The effect of Bt talong on the environment is still unknown, but the effect of the present breed of eggplants to the human body is already well known—it is bad.
The eggplant is very susceptible to pests, specifically, worms that burrow into the flesh of the fruit. To protect their crops, farmers douse them with heavy doses of pesticides. Many of those beautiful eggplants you buy in the market have double the allowable dose of pesticides. But the farmers have no choice but to use pesticides, or else they would have nothing to harvest.
The experiment on the Bt talong puts a gene that is pest resistant to the eggplant. That makes the eggplant naturally resistant to pests without need of pesticides.
Which is more harmful now, the Bt talong or the eggplant soaked in pesticides?