Probing the pork: The administration and most legislators say that the pork barrel is needed to support sectors which the national government oftenly overlooked, but critics say it has become more like the politicians' personal money. JES AZNAR (www.jesaznar.com)

In his younger days as a student in the southern Philippine province of Sulu, Al-Ghosaibi Jutli saw the huge potential seaweed farming held for local communities if only it was properly organized and exploited. Seaweed is used to produce everything from bread, beer, soap and toothpaste through to crucial fertilizers, vitamins and medicine.

Now working as a counselor in a Sharia court in Zamboanga del Norte, Jutli laments that the Sulu seaweed industry will remain an untapped dream and living conditions back home will never improve as a result.

He says the one-time big-time humanitarian and livelihood missions of civic organizations there are greatly appreciated and helpful, but admits their effects are not expected to last in the long run.

Zamboanga del Norte is currently the poorest province in the Philippines with a poverty incidence of 52.9, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB). Sulu ranks 13th among the poorest but logs the biggest increase in poverty incidence since 2003 - a solid 19 point increase from 20.3 to 39.3.

Despite an abundance in its marine and mineral resources, Zamboanga del Norte has remained on top of the NSCB’s infamous poverty list for the past three consecutive surveys.

Analysts have long been saying that poverty in provinces like Sulu and Zamboanga del Norte can be traced back to widespread corruption in government.

Alongside others, Jutli blames the fact that scarce public funds that should be invested strategically in developing promising local industries in areas of critical need are instead “wasted” in propagating political patronage through the “pork barrel” system.

In continuing with the pork barrel system, Jutli and others say, successive administrations are squandering the country’s long-term economic development for short term political gain.

It is, they say, a vicious circle that needs to be cut if the Philippines is to ever maximize its real potential.

The "pork barrel" or the Priority Development and Assistance Fund (PDAF) is, of course, the special allocation given to lawmakers to finance projects in their respective localities that usually don't get prioritized in the national budget.

The more than 200 lawmakers at the House of Representatives are each given PhP 70 million (USD 1.63 million) in PDAF, while their counterparts at the Senate are entitled to a bigger PhP 200 million (USD 4.65 million) each. Based on this year's General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2011, the government has allotted a total of PhP 24.62 billion (USD 572 million) for the PDAF – PhP 4.6 billion (USD 107 million) for the 23 senators and a little over PhP 20 million (USD 465,116) for the 285 congressmen.

After a lawmaker identifies a set of projects where his or her PDAF would be spent, the special fund is immediately divided and distributed to several implementing agencies --most often to the Department of Public Works and Highways, Department of Education, and the Department of Health -- as well as the local government units, which would also be tasked to carry out the lawmaker's program.

Lack of transparency

But since its institution in 2000, the PDAF - which traces its roots to the Community Development Fund (CDF) formed in 1990 - has been the subject of criticisms allegedly for the lack of transparency in the disbursement of the special fund.

Dolores Español of the Transparency International-Philippines admitted the PDAF system should not have been created in the first place.

"The pork barrel system is subject to abuse. Personally, I think that is a waste of public funds. Instead of going to the sector for which it is intended, the money gets dissipated and the people do not benefit from it," Español told the Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project in an interview.

Though some lawmakers have refused their share of the PDAF like former police chief and incumbent Senator Panfilo Lacson, others make it a political point to claim it.

Former Speaker Prospero Nograles and House Committee On Appropriations Chairman Edcel Lagman claimed that the "pork barrel" system in the Philippines -- unlike that of the early American version -- is equipped with mechanisms to ensure both efficiency and transparency.

Lawmakers are required to focus on qualified "soft" and "hard" projects for which funds can be spent. Hard projects refer to tangible projects like small infrastructures. Soft projects cover non-infrastructure projects like scholarship programs and medical assistance.

Legislators assure the public there are stringent procurement and public bidding procedures for PDAF spending - as well as mandatory post-audit reviews by the Commission on Audit (COA).

Nograles and Lagman among others, have claimed these mechanisms work.

"There has been no post-audit report by the Commission on Audit (COA) directly associating any member of Congress to a serious abuse, misuse and/or infraction in the utilization and implementation of the much-maligned congressional funds," the two maintained in a paper called "Understanding the Pork Barrel."

However, monitoring of PDAF spending over the years has had some limitations, admits COA spokesperson Ronaldo Macale.

“Too tedious”

"COA follows a certain criteria and sampling methodology so we can pinpoint an undertaking that needs to be audited," said Macale, adding that the agency is "selective" in its audit because doing a complete audit nationwide would simply be "too tedious."

In some cases, Macale says they have encountered "seeming irregularities" that have later ended up being "explained and remedied" by the implementing agency.

But in other cases, however, "inexplicable" transactions are referred to the Office of the Ombudsman, which gathers evidence and determines if there is probable cause to file administrative cases against public officials.

He admitted the COA has in previous years noted some questionable entries regarding disbursements for supply which were found to be "ghost (non-existent) deliveries."

"One of the most usual findings concerns over-pricing," Macale told PPTRP.

State auditor Annabeth Mendoza, an audit team leader at the COA, told PPTRP that most of the time, the problem lies in the legislators' role in PDAF spending going beyond simply identifying the projects.

"To some extent the lawmakers are the one selecting the contractors -- although we do not have documents to prove this."

‘Stick and carrot’

In a recent World Bank-sponsored speaking engagement in the US, military fund scam whistleblower and now COA commissioner Heidi Mendoza said the special allocation for lawmakers has always been shrouded in mystery.

She added that the COA "never rightfully audited" the pork barrel.

Mendoza was among the COA auditors who investigated embattled military comptroller Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia's supposed ill-gotten wealth more than five years ago. Her efforts later led to the prosecution of the military official and his family for plunder before the Sandiganbayan.

Dr. Felix Muga, a senior fellow at the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG), claims the special fund has been used to “control” lawmakers.

"The PDAF can be used as a stick and carrot instrument of the administration to get the support of the legislators. It is known that it was used in the previous administration [of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo] to defeat the impeachment complaint against her. No cash allotment for PDAF if a representative is pro-impeachment," Muga told PPTRP.

Dr. Leonor Briones, University of the Philippines professor and former National Treasurer, claimed that sources close to her had confirmed to her that the PDAF was behind the overwhelming results of the impeachment complaint against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez at the House of Representatives.

Gutierrez resigned from her post and saved herself from the scrutiny of an impeachment trial before the Senate.

In the early hours of March 22, a Tuesday, a total of 212 lawmakers voted in favor of two impeachment complaints against Gutierrez -- way over the 95 minimum required votes. Gutierrez was accused of sitting on controversial cases involving high-profile public officials and was supposed to face Senate trial in May.

"My informants say that on Monday [or the night before the voting], those who voted for impeachment received checks chargeable to Fund 101... On Tuesday pabaon [sendoff gift] was distributed to select congressmen with amounts purportedly reaching as high as PhP 700,000," Briones said.

Four months before that, money supposedly was also what convinced lawmakers to finally legislate the PhP 1.645 trillion (USD 38.25 billion) national budget for 2011 in November last year.

Recently, speculations swirled about the Palace dangling an additional PhP 100 million (USD 2.3 million) in PDAF funds - on top of the PhP 200 million set under the GAA - for senators to vote in favor of deferring the August elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao for 2013. Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile belied the rumors and called them a "falsity."

Senator Panfilo Lacson recently claimed that an additional PhP 30 million (USD 697,674) "pork barrel" was given to each senator on top of their PhP 200 million staple PDAF. The funds however did not come from the GAA but from the from the Motor Vehicles’ Users Charge (MVUC) also known as the Road User’s Tax, or taxes exacted from vehicle owners. Lacson claims that the alleged addition to the pork barrel was a first in the history of the PDAF system.

"It can be said that this is part of political reality. When the administration, in the name of good governance, does what the former administration used to do, it is making itself more and more vulnerable," Briones warned in her newspaper column.

For its part, the current government has rejected calls for the discontinuation of the pork barrel system, arguing that it has succeeded over the years in its goal of giving priority to sectors more oftenly overlooked by the national government, which are usually more focused on "mega-projects."

"The demands for the abolition of the CDF or PDAF are uncalled for. Scrapping these allocations would mean more indigent patients not getting free medical assistance, more students deprived of scholarships, more rural folk denied of livelihood support, more people without potable water and electricity, more farmers without irrigation facilities and more unemployed because of fewer infrastructure projects," said Nograles and Lagman.

But Briones told PPTRP she was unconvinced. She said the lawmakers are still able to exploit the PDAF partly because the COA, which is supposed to monitor the spending, has not been doing its assignment. "Hindi malinaw at napaka-loose ng accountability kasi takot ang lahat ng tao (Accountability is loose and unclear because people are afraid)," she said.

Briones said a more detailed auditing system should be followed in accounting for all the disbursements made from the PDAF. ""The auditing process should be more stringent and its results should be made available to us, down to the last centavo," said Briones, who is lead convenor of anti-poverty and anti-corruption group Social Watch Philippines.

In her agency's defense, Mendoza belied Briones' pot shot against auditors: "Quite a number of COA audit findings regarding the utilization have been published in the newspapers and cases were filed in court based on our findings." She added that their audit procedures are always "inclusive of confirmation and verification procedures" to ensure that the funds are spent for their intended purposes.

But as for the progress of the cases that stem from COA reports and the eventual prosecution of accused public officials, that's another story altogether.

Tip of iceberg

That is why analysts are at one in alleging that corruption in the "pork barrel" system is only the tip of a far larger iceberg.

Briones alleges that corruption pervades in every aspect of government budgeting - and not only in the PDAF, thus the need for a more efficient "alternative budgeting" system. Aside from the PDAF, Briones said corruption is also rife in "other congressional allocations, grants to local government units, transfer of funds, and even bonuses to lawmakers' staff."

Briones said her group has been pushing for the last six years an "alternative budgeting" system in which bigger appropriation is awarded to sectors which had not been prioritized in the past, like health, education, agriculture, and the environment.

"Everything has to be budgeted. The more discretion you give, the more you are tempting public officials and opening doors for corruption," Briones said, adding the public should be more vigilante in demanding transparency from their lawmakers.

For his part, Muga said the first step into introducing a new system to replace the PDAF is for the government to start exercising more transparency in spending public funds, as well as fostering a healthy dialog with the people. "Kailangan ito ng masusing pag-aaral at malayang talakayan bago makagawa ng mga konkretong hakbangin (Deeper study and discussion are needed before concrete steps are made)," he said.

In the end, it is not solely the job of a single agency, like the COA, to point out irregularities in PDAF spending, or spending of any public fund for that matter, but it is rather a collective effort.

"COA cannot be watchdogs all by itself. There are managers in each agency and they should be conscientious also in handling the funds. That is why we always say, 'Fiscal management belongs to managers', not COA. And these managements should always be prepared because we are on the lookout," said COA's Macale.

Back in Zamboanga del Norte, counselor Jutli's dreams remain humble – that their district representatives would provide direct money into setting up factories where seaweeds and other natural resources abundant in the province could be processed there.

That is, if only they had factories, and yes, if only they had special funds to build factories.

"In Sulu, you could not really feel there's such a thing as pork barrel. Puro nagiging personal money nila. (It has become their personal money.) There's no true community development," Jutli lamented.

State auditor Mendoza admits the process currently in place to ensure transparency in PDAF spending is really still wanting even as she succinctly summed up the root cause of the problem.

"For as long as the lawmakers have their say on the utilization of funds instead of only legislating laws, the PDAF will always be abused," she said. Philippine Public Transparency Reporting Project

(The author is a senior news producer of GMA News Online, the official website of the GMA Network.)