Lust for pork barrels

Congress has become an incorrigible institution  madly in love or in lust with their wasteful pork barrel. Despite the Supreme Court decision declaring the PDAF or pork barrel unconstitutional, congress has once again inserted a provision for a pork barrel under a new name in the 2015 budget.

I join many others in hoping  that members of Congress will scrap this. The latest experience we had with a pork barrel wasted about P10 billion in a scam of Janet Napoles, which led to the imprisonment of Senators Juan Enrile, Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada.

Unfortunately, the identities of the second batch of people involved that was promised by Justice Secretary Leila de Lima has not been revealed  and no charges have been filed so far. Is it because these are the names of allies of President Aquino?

I see no serious opposition from Congress although Sen. Miriam Santiago raised the red flag about the insertion of a lump sum pork barrel and the new definition of the controversial “savings” in the 2015 budget.

Sen. Chiz Escudero corrected and redefined the term “savings”  to place a safeguard in the allocation and use of the 2015 budget.

But what is strange is that no one from the Senate has raised a question about the lump sum appropriation  assigned to various  departments but gives members of Congress the power to identify projects for funding.

I hope that once the budget for 2015 is passed, a nongovernment group or congressman will raise this matter again to  the Suprme Court and have it  declared unconstitutional.

The people have to be vigilant unless we all want Congress to waste the people’s money again.

Let us stop the lust for pork barrels. The funds come from the hard-earned income of the people and yet, congressmen spend it  like their own.

This has been going on for a long time. It has to  end  once and for all.

Congressmen are supposed to make laws and not implement projects in their  districts. They should learn their lesson.

The same thing is happening in  local legislative bodies  in Cebu. They have copied this practice from the national government, and this is  basically not  in aid of legislation but more of in aid of reelection.

In Cebu City, the City Council revealed that the executive department has yet to use a  P500 million-plus budget for infrastructure although the  year is about to end.

However,  these  allocations are already in the pipeline, meaning biddings were already conducted and the program of works and estimates were already prepared.

But mind you, this is not a monopoly of the city government. This is is also happening in other  government bodies.

Still, it is good to ask Mayor Mike Rama to shed light on this matter.  I believe the mayor can answer this question clearly because he has nothing to hide and has not been accused of graft and corruption.