Janet Lim-Napoles. FILE PHOTO
CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Bishops of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, IFI or Philippine Independent Church, joined the growing call for the abolition of what they called “syndicated distribution of government money to a few.”
During its three-day meeting here that ended on Wednesday, the IFI’s Supreme Council of Bishops (SCB) said the investigation into the pork barrel scam should continue and those guilty of its misuse should be prosecuted and punished.
The Most Rev. Ephraim Fajutagana, the IFI’s supreme bishop, said the pork barrel scam and other forms of corruption in the government was “a disturbing reality” that made Filipinos “suffer from the worsening economic difficulties.”
“Government resources, intended to uplift them from the misery of poverty, are systematically stolen from the nation’s coffers,” Fajutagana said.
He said that during the three-day meeting, the 35 bishops in attendance agreed that the diversion of the state funds by lawmakers, Janet Lim-Napoles, and her non-governmental organizations “is more than a thievery.”
“The controversy has pulled down the curtain of hypocrisy that for decades has covered the syndicated distribution of government resources to the hands of the few while people are left with badly shaved social services,” Fajutagana said.
Napoles has been described as the mastermind of the P10-billion PDAF scam, along with at least 50 congressmen and senators. The scam involved ghost projects.
Right Rev. Dr. Vic Esclamado, chair of the IFI Supreme Council, said because “billions of pesos are being plundered instead of being allotted to a constituency of mostly poor people made the crime more intolerable.”
“We see the pork barrel scam as another manifestation of systemic injustice bred by bureaucratic corruption that arises from the country’s bankrupt political systems,” Esclamado said.
“It has come to simply mean taking money from the beggar’s alms plate or taking a bowl of ‘lugaw’ (porridge) from the hands of the poor dying of hunger done repeatedly year after year,” he added.
Fajutagana said while “greed in men is a natural thing” humans should be able to learn to control it.
One of the ways, he said, is to “put the welfare of the country and the people first.”
He said to prevent a similar anomaly, the government should totally abolish the pork barrel system.
President Aquino “must make every effort, at the same time, to recover the trust of the people towards the bureaucracy through persistent efforts to prosecute and punish plunderers, regardless of who they are,” Fajutagana said.