Pointless initiative

The people’s initiative against pork barrel is lamentably pointless. Its features are either already emphasized in Supreme Court decisions or are counterproductively vague.

The signature campaign to pass an antipork law via people’s initiative kicked off in Cebu last Saturday. Has the citizen’s movement gone the way of Occupy Wall Street: superficial, inarticulate and catering to the least common denominator? Has it been hijacked by groups with further agenda, from the hardline Left to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP)? And why are media outlets reporting everything but the initiative’s actual text?

The proposed law revolves around a prohibition on lump-sum budget allocations. This is a head scratcher because this is central to the high court’s Belgica decision against the legislators’ pork.

Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio emphasized that lump sums are prohibited because the Constitution gives the president a power to veto line items in the budget, which cannot be exercised against lump sums. The Court intended its ruling to be broad, prohibiting “all informal practices of similar import and effect” as pork. This is weighty legal ammunition that any citizen can already fire. The initiative cheapens the Court’s extensive pronouncements by not even referring to them. Indeed, weeks ago, Senate President Franklin Drilon opined to the Inquirer that the proposed law is unnecessary given the decisions, and Sen. Sonny Angara added that its “symbolic value” cannot replace year-to-year scrutiny of the budget.

Worse, some of the initiative’s points contradict other laws. For example, it prohibits expenditures for items not in the budget. This is far too simplistic because the Constitution allows the president to realign funds by transferring savings in one allocation to another, and some items are broad enough that one may nitpick over whether or not the new expenditure was in the budget. It proposes that unspent funds cannot be spent without a new law, but this contradicts the concept of savings in the Constitution. It also prohibits “impoundment” by compelling officials to spend budgeted funds. This blanket prohibition contradicts the president’s power to suspend spending and disbelieves the many contingencies in running a government. In great contrast to the proposed one-page law, the high court’s lengthy Araullo decision against the Disbursement Acceleration Program was nuanced, and stressed the president’s powers over public spending and the need to maintain some flexibility.

Most worrisome of all, the proposed initiative makes the above acts criminal. It is impossible to remove all items resembling lump sums from the budget precisely because of the infinite contingencies in governing a country. Belgica upheld how a budgetary item may have a broad scope, and fixed spending schedules may not always be possible. Calamity and intelligence funds aside, for example, the government noted that there is some discretion in disbursing salaries under the Project Noah storm warning program because it cannot predict when hazard pays for typhoons that hit the country have to be given. Making it criminal to pass a law containing a lump sum, using the initiative’s broad definition, may thus be vague and impractical. The same is true of criminalizing in the broadest terms the prevention of or any intervention in a budgeted disbursement. Such broadly defined crimes may readily be abused to persecute political opponents and hapless staffers. Civil servants may well feel a Sword of Damocles hanging over them each time they make decisions regarding spending, compelling them to be robots or to eschew public service altogether.

It pains me to write this because I have great respect for many figures who stood up to lead the antipork movements, but I have severe reservations regarding others. As I fear that the proposed law was not well thought out, I instantly face-palmed when I saw Rep. Neri Colmenares quoted in many reports. He had previously consistently come unprepared and made vague claims before the high court. He was quoted saying, “I am not very familiar with the Internet” in the cybercrime case and, “I am not very familiar with Epira (Electric Power Industry Reform Act)” when he sued the Manila Electric Co. Similarly, it is difficult not to have reservations about the CBCP, given how they seem to be more of a political actor than a moral compass these days. So what are the real agenda?

I was at the Million People March and was heartened to see perfumed weekend warriors who stayed overnight at the Manila Hotel before going to Luneta, alongside more typical protesters. However, I also went to the subsequent rally at Ayala Triangle in Makati and felt it was dragooned into a platform to attack President Aquino. More recently, antipork groups signed impeachment complaints against him.

In contrast, beyond the landmark decisions, I find myself agreeing with Angara, chair of the Senate ways and means committee, who has called for transparency in the entire budget process, including how the executive and legislative negotiate the budget the president initially presents. I likewise admire Sen. Grace Poe’s reiteration of the freedom of information bill. Pork will not be magically erased with a single idealistic wave of a wand or passage of a one-page people’s initiative, and I feel that the young reformists among our leaders championing more concrete steps represent me far more than my fellow ordinary citizens calling for a return to Luneta.

Oscar Franklin Tan (@oscarfbtan, facebook.com/OscarFranklinTan) cochairs the Philippine Bar Association Committee on Constitutional Law and teaches at the University of the East.