Efforts to penalize politicians who habitually plaster their names and faces on government projects funded with taxpayers’ money finally gained a foothold in the Senate with Senator Antonio Trillanes IV’s sponsorship speech on the so-called “anti-epal” bill before the chamber adjourned earlier this month.
Senators on Tuesday started formal deliberations on the “anti-epal” bill and agreed to expand the measure to include politicians and public officials who put their names and images on donated police cars, ambulances and fire trucks.
If it were all up to Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, politicians who plaster their faces on billboards to announce they initiated public works projects should be banned from public office for the simple reason that many of the projects are substandard, overpriced and launched without public consultation.
Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s “anti-epal” bill has drawn the support of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-National Secretariat for Social Action (Nassa) and Malacañang.
Credit belongs to the taxpayers, so take those billboards with your big smiling face somewhere else. This, in essence, is the message of Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago in Senate Bill No. 1967, her version of what the man in the street would call an “anti-epal” measure, as it is directed at politicians or bureaucrats who claim credit for projects built with public funds.
