President Benigno Aquino III’s speech on National Heroes’ Day last Monday was both timely and a bit perplexing, specifically when he mentioned “enemies of reform.”
If the President was referring to his political foes and rivals, well, they are few and far between. Many of them are less focused on targetting his administration inasmuch as they are planning ahead for the 2016 elections.
The opposition bloc or remnants of the Lakas bloc headed by former president and now suspended legislator Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are joining the growing clamor for the abolition of the pork barrel, but their participation is clearly tainted by their attempts to discredit Aquino’s administration with the end goal of fueling and legitimizing calls for his impeachment.
What of the three senators who are jailed for the pork barrel scandal? Despite their suspension, they still hold a strong political base. Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile is known to command some loyalty among retired military officers like his Edsa colleague now Sen. Gregorio Honasan.
The howls for Aquino’s impeachment, however, are drowned by the groundswell of support for the permanent abolition of the pork barrel by a multi-sectoral alliance of church, civil society and militant groups.
Except for militant groups who’ve made it a habit of denouncing each sitting president, those in the church, civil society, the academe and ordinary private citizens aren’t seeking to oust Aquino from office. They’re after bigger fish (or pork) to fry.
They’re certainly not the “enemies of reform” that President Aquino is talking about, though they do represent a significant stumbling block and a legitimate challenge to his proposed 2015 national budget that his officials claim to be pork-free.
Mr. Aquino himself, while claiming that his administration is succeeding in implementing reforms, was reluctant to include the pork barrel abolition in his program since Day One when the Janet Lim-Napoles controversy broke out in June.
Anti-pork barrel lobbyists are a thorn on the administration’s side, a reminder for the President and his allies not to kick his well-meaning critics or resist a People’s Initiative to reform the way the government uses public funds.
Rather than engaging in a head-on collision with the Supreme Court ruling’s of the pork barrel as unconstitutional — we understand that the Aquino administration simply wants to wash its hands over the use of the similarly pork barrel setup called the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) –– Mr. Aquino should heed the public clamor to erase any stain or suspicion of pork barrel funds in next year’s budget.
If he can’t do that, then the people will do it for him.
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