Basta! Scrap the Pork calls at the #MillionPeopleMarch

WHO: Everyone enraged by the controversy generated after private citizen Janet Napoles was incriminated in the misuse of  government funds—specifically that of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allotted to elected official in both Houses of Congress—a practice that seems to persist in the Aquino administration despite its calls for clean governance since it assumed office in 2010.

The PDAF is commonly known as "pork barrel," hence the image on the poster. Poor swine.

WHAT: A form of protest action calling for the the national government to outrightly abolish the so-called Pork Barrel Fund not only in both Houses of Congress but also of the President's, (proposed at Php 1.3 Trillion for 2014) in light of controversies arising from the Napoles case.
WHEN: Today, 04 October 2013 from 2-8 pm
WHERE: Ayala Avenue, Makati City

WHY:
a. Because despite today's Moody's 3rd investment upgrading and the stock market's historic highs, the majority of Filipinos in the Philippines still live below poverty level, jobs are scarce, average cost of living is high, average Filipinos still leave the country to work abroad in the hope of uplifting their living standards, and corruption is still prevalent in government agencies;

b. Because billions of unliquidated pesos supposedly meant for development and priority projects of senators and congressmen allegedly transferred hands among government officials and private citizen Napoles in the last 4 years alone (i.e. persisting even under the Aquino administration);

c. That the recently-unearthed DAP funds—a "mechanism" put in place (by the Budget Department in 2011) supposedly meant to accelerate government spending to foster economic growth—with full admissions from Senators coming in days after ambiguous denials and/or explanations related to such fund releases, have lead to more questions than answers about how the current administration spent its funds and savings yet not showing any concrete accomplishment since its implementation thereby "defeating its purpose," to paraphrase a Palace reporter.

d. That, practically in agreement with an article that quotes Alan Greenspan, despite the Aquino administration's economic growth achievements and efforts towards ridding agencies of corruption, the government's response to challenges or criticisms from its citizenry is:

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"[...Some would say] flustered and in denial. Seemingly shrugging off the disappointing statistics, the country’s technocrats are flushed with what legendary ex-Federal Reserve Board Chairman, Alan Greenspan, characterized as “Irrational Exuberance”: The tendency among market participants to obstinately focus on instantaneous, shallow gains at the expense of recognizing more fundamental structural imbalances in the economy, which carry long-term risks of destabilization. They rather focus on the boom in the stock markets and the investment grade euphoria, than, let’s say, re-examine the merits of the current growth trajectory. In fact, some studies, as business columnist Ben Kritz notes, suggest that there is little correlation between acquiring an investment grade status, on one hand, and growth in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), on the other."
(Source)

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 Anyway, go and be counted if you can.

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Read former Budget Sec. Benjamin Diokno's take on the DAP:
"DAP as 'Fiscal Stimulus': a misnomer"
Oct. 2, 2013 / BusinessWorld Online
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"SOULUTIONS": Don't cut trees, pursue real transparency and accountability among voted officials

Copy-pasting an interesting opinion about pork barrel funds and transparency, resignations, and destructive solutions to the perennial flooding problem in Metro Manila.

The latter merited a petition on Change.org started by a Kathryna de Bustos which I signed today, and from where I came upon Neal Cruz' article in the Inquirer.

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As I See It

Please don’t cut trees; plant them

By Neal H. Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer

12:14 am | Friday, June 14th, 2013

 21 210 118

Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile’s resignation as Senate President was a surprise even to his closest allies, Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Tito Sotto. The best thing in JPE’s privilege speech that day was not the resignation itself but his call for a transparent audit of Senate finances.

Enrile said his irrevocable resignation was intended to make it very clear that he wants all senators, himself included, to be put under a microscopic scrutiny on how they utilized their fund allocations.

There were those who dismissed Enrile’s resignation as an empty gesture because it came on the second to the last day of the 15th Congress. As I see it, however, his resignation was such an important precedent that it should henceforth be the standard practice in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Senators and congressmen will be much more cautious in using their fund allocations if at the end of each Congress they know that a full and transparent audit is coming. I believe that by resigning, Enrile raised the bar of public accountability.

The puzzler in all of this is that those senators who have been asking for Enrile’s head by raising a howl over his disbursement of Senate funds to individual senators are now the ones who seem to be opposing a full-blown audit of the utilization of Senate funds.

Why are some senators moving heaven and earth to prevent such an audit? Why, indeed? Are they afraid that the Senate funds that they received will be found to have been diverted to buy pricey mansions in expensive addresses?

Who among the senators are afraid of the transparent audit Enrile has pushed by resigning? Let’s look at the noisy ones in the Senate to determine who they are.

As Senate President, JPE repeatedly stressed that he would be able to account for every centavo that his office had disbursed. This is something that many of his colleagues may find difficult to do because they have merely issued certifications on how their allocations were used.

For ordinary citizens and taxpayers, the real issue is what happens to the funds disbursed by the Office of the Senate President to the individual senators. After all, the end-users of the funds—in this case the individual senators—are the ones who should account for the money.

As Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago once said, “Ang sarap maging senador (It’s nice to be a senator).” Maybe not anymore, if the transparent liquidation and audit of Senate funds that Enrile called for is institutionalized.

In his speech, Enrile said he and Sen. Panfilo Lacson, chair of the committee on accounts, had taken “the position that if we (senators and congressmen) were to be sensitive to the public pulse and with the agreement of both houses of Congress, we should revert back to the old system of liquidation and accounting for each centavo of public money entrusted to us.”

To that statement of Enrile, I say: By all means, let’s return to the old system and refuse to vote back into office any senator or congressman who will refuse to properly liquidate taxpayer money.

Pay special attention to the pork barrel, which is deodorized as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). Some contractors claim that some legislators demand at least 30-percent kickback on projects. Include the bribe money given to engineers, treasurers, cashiers, local government officials, etc., and the loss can easily go up to 50 percent or more. That is why we have substandard public works projects: The contractors have to finish the projects with what is left to them after paying off government officials.

The PDAF amounts to several billions of pesos every year. Half of that is lost to corruption. Imagine how that lost fund could have contributed to improving the lives of all Filipinos—in terms of housing for the homeless, for example, or creating jobs for the jobless.

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A reader, Moises Norman Z. Garcia, a professor at the University of Santo Tomas, reported in a letter that 350 mature trees along Lacson (formerly Governor Forbes) Avenue will be cut by the Department of Public Works and Highways to give way to an underpass intended to ease traffic at the intersection of España and Lacson avenues. According to Garcia, the loss to the environment far outweighs the benefits of an underpass there. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and provide oxygen, filter the pollutants from the air, and serve as shelter from the heat of the sun. Trees also moderate the hot microclimate in the urban jungle that Metro Manila has become.

“The cooling effect of a single tree is equivalent to 20 air conditioners,” Garcia said. Imagine how much electricity we would all save simply by planting more trees.

And why an underpass? Why not a flyover, which would require less excavation and therefore save the trees?

The DPWH (and the Metro Manila Development Authority) are quick to cut trees as it is the easy way to do things. We should plant more trees instead of cutting them. We have a National Greening Program that aims to plant 1.5 million trees. But here is the DPWH cutting grown trees instead.

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Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/54527/please-dont-cut-trees-plant-them#ixzz2ZB2zhloO
Follow the Philippine Daily Inquirer: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

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Sign the petition if you care for the trees not only in the City of Manila nor the inhabited 2,000 (of the 7,107) islands this archipelago is made of, and actually care that "soulutions "shouldn't be destructive but well-thought-out.

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