How? The President announced that “it is time to abolish the PDAF.”
Great? We don’t have to rally anymore? He is giving us what we want?
Not at all. There’s a sleight of mind going on here. Notice he didn’t say “abolish the pork barrel,” he said “abolish the PDAF”. The hope is that we will equate the two.
The PDAF will formally go. But the pork barrel stays. What will change is its presentation. No more lump sums for each legislator. Replacing it will be line items for projects—which is exactly the form that the pork barrel in the United States (which we copied but “improved”) takes. But you can be sure that these items will total P70 million times the number of Congress people plus P200 million times the number of senators.
The President tells us that this method, plus all the other reforms—he enumerates them—will no longer make the pork barrel “susceptible to abuse or corruption.”
Please. A lot of the reforms he enumerates are already in the books. They have been ignored, with impunity. What makes him think they will not be ignored in the future?
Moreover, as has been emphasized in the latest Philippine Human Development Report 2012/2013, even if the pork barrel were corruption-free (which is a very unlikely scenario), this “divide-by-N syndrome”—“the mechanical and feckless dissipation of government funds across localities instead of their rational allocation to where these might have the most impact”—will still result in inefficiencies and inequities. At the same time, the work of local development councils and their own investment priorities, are passed over.
In other words, in this supposedly new, reformed, but still pork barrel system the President proposes, he will still be able to wield great power over Congress (he can veto any line item he wants); the legislators still can choose the projects they want and use them for reelection purposes; and the people will still be left holding the bag.
Who is the President kidding?
See you at the rally on Monday.
x x x."
Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/59459/sleight-of-mind#ixzz2cpqRVS6X
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