Now that we have elected the new members of Congress in the House and the Senate, they must understand that human behavior has two important elements: antecedent and consequence.
For instance, the past
controversial multibillion-peso Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or
pork barrel issue is just the consequence and unless you look at the
antecedent, you’ll only end up wondering why it happened again instead of being
prevented to recur by putting as a painful lesson the important people in jail
for
corruption and plunder.
Let’s look at the antecedent of how the crime was committed and how and why it should have been prevented in the first place by officials from the four independent agencies established by the 1987 Constitution with vast powers to safeguard public funds, to choose the upright and dedicated people involved in governance, to monitor the three branches of the government against corrupt officials, and to control and supervise employees in the government against immoral and criminal acts.
These important agencies in government are the Commission on Audit (COA), the Commission on Elections (Comelec), the Ombudsman and the Civil Service Commission (CSC), all with sweeping judicial and quasi-judicial powers to prevent the commission of corruption and plunder.
Looking deeper into the scams that broke out one after another involving some members of Congress, it can be legally and morally argued that some officials from these four constitutional agencies may have also committed criminal negligence in the performance of their duties. The basic principle that one does not only commit a crime by commission but also by omission applies to them.
Worse, many of them, particularly from COA, the agency mandated by the Constitution to strictly audit and account public funds getting in and out of the National Treasury, appears to have colluded with those involved in the scams.
The question is who will now investigate these impeachable officials? Under the Constitution, the House initiates and investigates impeachable officers and if evidence is established, the Senate tries and punishes the culprits.
But you have a situation where most members of the Senate and House were themselves under public scrutiny for possible involvement in the pork barrel scam.
Will the Ombudsman do it and finish the job? But isn’t it also under scrutiny for gross negligence?
Under the Constitution, the office of the Ombudsman independently monitors all three branches of government and it has the power to prevent, investigate, and prosecute grafters and plunderers in government.
The Comelec periodically
screens out candidates for more than 17,000 elective positions, including
those running for president, vice
president, senators and congressmen, and make sure that the Omnibus Election
Code is followed.
Curiously, and this has not been corrected up to this writing, the Comelec itself appears to be encouraging the commission of corruption and plunder, particularly under Section 100, which allows a presidential candidate to spend P10 per voter and another P5 if he or she is running under a legally recognized political party. This means P750 million in allowable expenses based on 50 million voting population.
A senatorial candidate is allowed to spend P3 per voter, and a congressman a little bit lower.
Can you imagine a law allowing a presidential candidate to spend P750 million for a position that has a maxiumum salary in six years of only P3.8 million? It’s even a joke to run for president with this measly sum. In recent years, expenses for presidential elections ran to billions of pesos.
The implication is that when you get elected, the first order of the day is to recoup or recover your expenses and along the way, comes the pork barrel of every size, shape and color.
For its part, the CSC, with the new Administrative Code of 1987 (EO 292), is constitutionally mandated to promote morale, efficiency, integrity, responsiveness, progressiveness and courtesy in all branches of government. Arguably, the PDAF scam happened because of the breakdown of morale and discipline in the bureaucracy, and this is largely due to criminal negligence.
Briefly, the government accumulated budgets for the past 25 years alone (1989-2019) at approximately P25 trillion, with over P2 trillion of this earmarked as pork barrel.
Looking back, it is not just the president, the budget secretary, the senators and the congressmen who have allowed the likes of Napoles to thrive but the constitutional oversight officials as well, and as a consequence, finger-pointing and buck-passing became the order of the day, endangering the State.
What can the angry people do? Stage a massive protest rally? Or wait until those in the armed services come to their senses and finally save the State? Mind you, this is not a remote possibility if pork barrel scams persist.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.