Spit-polishing the image of the House

HOW does one burnish the image of the House of Representatives, whose members, either collectively or individually, are called names that have ranged from a homo erectus bereft of scruples to anything that belly crawls and has a huge jaw?

Forty-two days after replacing Pangasinan Rep. Jose de Venecia as Speaker of the House, Davao City Rep. Prospero Nograles has unleashed two publications that he says should give people a clearer idea of the reforms he has in mind for the Lower House.

The first is a pamphlet authored by Nograles and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, chairman of the House committee on appropriations, entitled “Understanding the Pork Barrel.” The second is a book called Sustaining the Growth, Spreading the Benefits, which Nograles says outlines the reform agenda “for the house of the people.”

But the materials, especially the pamphlet delving on pork, unmask Nograles’s much-ballyhooed reform initiatives as nothing more than an endorsement of existing practices. Worse, the focus is more on a major press relations offensive to sell the much-maligned Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to the public.

“It’s hogwash. They’re trying to wash the hog,” says Vince Lazatin, executive director of the watchdog Transparency and Accountability Network (TAN), on the House leadership’s efforts to make pork barrel more palatable to the public. He also notes, “The pamphlet’s section on transparency contains nothing on transparency.”

A congressman representing a district can get as much as P70 million in PDAF per year, while a party-list representative gets P35 million. They are also allowed to identify infrastructure projects worth up to P20 million for their districts under the Congressional Allocation (CA). The CA is charged to the budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). (see also The perks of being congressman)

Read other PCIJ reports on the pork barrel:

• Pork is a political, not a developmental, tool
• Legislators feed on pork
• The perils of pork
• Slicing up the pork

“The public cannot appreciate what it does not understand,” the 14-page pamphlet begins. It proceeds to explain that the process of allocating pork barrel has its roots in the United States, where it was — and still is — viewed with derision.

Pork and a forked tongue

Nograles and Lagman argue that PDAF projects “complement and link the national development goals to the countryside and grassroots as well as to depressed areas which are overlooked by central agencies.” They also say that the pork barrel system’s legality was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1994, as a “valid and constitutional exercise of the congressional ‘power of the purse.'”

But the most debatable argument they raise in their defense of pork is this: that since its institution in 1990, “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.”

It’s a devious argument, to say the least. The absence of direct reference to lawmakers in unflattering COA reports on pork is due not to congressmen on best behavior, but on a technical detail in the audit system: it is the implementing agency that is audited.

“Nothing in the documents will point to a lawmaker,” explains Heidi Mendoza, who worked as COA auditor for 22 years. She adds that the agency that takes charge of the project undergoes the audit process, not the lawmaker who funded it with his pork barrel. “The agency gets hit, not the congressman,” she points out.

Indeed, while lawmakers do not directly handle pork barrel money, there have been ingenious ways by which a huge part of the fund finds its way to their pockets.

The PCIJ book “Pork and Other Perks,” relates that as early as 1998, then Finance Secretary Salvador Enriquez revealed that “up to 45 percent of pork barrel funds might have been lost to ‘commissions,’ especially in the case of the money set aside for school and other instruction materials.” He added that kickbacks from public-works projects eat up an average of 30 percent of the total project cost.

The book also details what has become a seemingly institutionalized sharing of pork-barrel largesse, from the lawmaker who identifies the project, the government personnel who issues the papers for the release of funds, the personnel from the implementing agency who oversees the project, the mayor, to the barangay captain.

The PCIJ has reported as well that in 2001, P21 billion or a fifth of the government’s P104-billion procurement budget was lost to commissions cornered by legislators, officials, and contractors. And there have been numerous cases where lawmakers choose the contractors, funneling pork barrel projects to construction firms controlled by a relative. Others have become so brazen, using up funds for inexistent projects.

Molehill out of a mountain?

Nograles and Lagman’s effort to belittle the scandals surrounding pork-barrel funds is quite a slap in the face of various nongovernmental organizations that have, through the years, monitored the use of the PDAF and CA.

The Caucus of Development NGO Networks (CODE-NGO), the biggest coalition of NGOs in the country, began monitoring the use of pork-barrel allocations in 2005, despite the refusal of most lawmakers to provide pertinent documents.

In its preliminary report in March 2007, CODE-NGO revealed that out of 64 pork-funded road projects it monitored, two worth P5.9 million were missing but were reported to the DPWH as finished. Eighteen similar projects worth P14 million were found to be defective, with the roads eroded, cracked, or ridden with potholes a year after completion.

A dormitory and canteen project was “very incomplete such that it was only being used as a stockroom.” There was even a project involving six computers that were obviously overpriced, with each unit costing P217,500.

Apparently responding to the clamor for transparency in pork allocations, Nograles and Lagman devoted half a page to tackle “innovative additional safeguards.”

Under this heading, the two said they had “directed the publication in a congressional website all of the projects and programs identified by House members.” The envisioned website will also include the progress status and accomplishment of the projects. They said this would enable the public to “make reasonable protests and complaints”

But many congressional districts have yet to have Internet access. Too, the clamor of NGOs and community groups is for lawmakers to consult their constituents before selecting a project to make it more responsive to their district’s requirements. Still others believe the pork barrel system should be abolished since it intrudes into the function of the executive

TAN’s Lazatin also decries Nograles’s plan to make the pamphlet a required reading for high school and college students.

“This is an attempt to brainwash young children into accepting pork barrel,” Lazatin says. “It is wholly inappropriate for congressmen to preach and push pork barrel to be part of the educational system. The House’s propaganda, he says, should have no place inside the campus.

But propaganda seems to be the core of Nograles’s plan in “reforming” the House.

Early this month, Congress’s website revealed Nograles formed an “image management team,” composed of four media relations officers. The team, it said, will also serve as his alter ego in running the House’s public affairs and media-relations arm. But the move is unpopular even to Congress insiders, since that job used to be handled by just one person: Noel Albano, former deputy secretary general for public relations and information department under ousted Speaker de Venecia.