Rizal Philippines | August 26, 2014
Read article at Pinoy Weekly
There were rallies and signature campaigns to make all forms of pork barrel illegal. It is like stopping a dam leak by sticking a finger in the hole, or repealing the law of supply and demand. We cant stop the pork barrel just like jueteng.
Jueteng is functional and it stays there because it has a social function. It is the source of the social amelioration fund of the LGU. Without the jueteng, the local executives will not be able to cope up with the dozens or even more who line up the house and their office to ask for food money, to buy tickets, sponsor this and that. The salary of the mayor will be insufficient to fund all of these..
So with the pork barrel. Our politics of patronage, our culture of entitlement, the way we look at govt as spigot of big money. (But we businessmen look at govt as huge sinkhole to fill with our tax money and we have to struggle to pay monthly) Thus, a politician runs for a position. He owes huge financial debts to his backer, and many followers. And he gets elected. And he is expected to pay back his political debts? How?
1. By providing jobs to his constituents.
2. The hand outs to followers
3. Pay back to those who financed the election campaign.
Thus the poor official has to look for projects, and other means to pay back. And the pork is the answer.
I dare say that many of those who joined this rally at one point in time got some payola from local politicians that came from the pork barrel. Many of those are hypocrites.
Even the church receives money from sources that are ill gotten. Not much has changed since Fili and Noli
Let us not see problems simplistically but as systemic.
