Pork helps keep dynasties in power

BAGUIO CITY—Public funds are helping political families in northern Luzon endear themselves to their constituents, giving a boost to their continued hold on power.

An Inquirer review showed that public funds, through the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel, are the main sources of financing for projects or assistance that politicians belonging to known political clans deliver to their constituents.

Many of these politicians had avoided the trap that has ensnared at least five senators and 23 members of the House of Representatives by not using nongovernment organizations (NGOs) as conduits for projects.

According to Alejandro Ciencia, political science professor at the University of the Philippines Baguio, political families operate on the principle that granting the requests of constituents, mainly with the use of public funds, ensured their stay in office.

The P10-billion pork scam pulled off by Janet Lim-Napoles, according to Ciencia, is a new phenomenon.

Ciencia said Napoles was able to take advantage of advanced information acquired easily from a weak bureaucracy.

Three senators now face a plunder complaint in the Office of the Ombudsman, along with Napoles, for allegedly pocketing hundreds of millions of pesos in kickbacks from a P10-billion scam involving pork that went to bogus NGOs.

The scheme was validated by a special audit report of the Commission on Audit covering 2007 to 2009.

“The power of traditional dynasties had always been anchored on traditional economic resources, such as land or sugar and copra plantations,” said Ciencia, who is also executive director of the UP Cordillera Studies Center.

“Sustaining control over an economic resource compelled traditional elite families to seek political office to protect, in part, their economic interests,” he said.

Subversion

Napoles and the lawmakers who benefited from the scheme “represent a subversion of modern bureaucratic processes,” though some traditional politicians are not associated with this practice, Ciencia said.

For example, La Union Rep. Victor Ortega spent his P23-million pork in 2009 on health projects and the construction of multipurpose buildings in his province.

At least P13 million of his 2009 pork went to indigent healthcare or the improvement of hospitals like the La Union Medical Center and the Ilocos Training and Regional Medical Center.

Ortega belongs to a clan that has been in power for over a century in La Union province since the American colonial government appointed the family patriarch, Don Joaquin Ortega, as provincial governor in 1901.

Ortega said pork had benefited influential political families, who are often besieged by requests from poor constituents, but it is not entirely necessary for his clan’s political longevity.

“Even when there was no PDAF, I was able to get reelected. In my first term [as representative in 1987], there was no PDAF but I won again in 1992 and again in 1995,” Ortega said. It was goodwill that counted most, he said.

From personal to public

Former San Fernando City Mayor Mary Jane Ortega, the lawmaker’s wife, said they used to shell out P1,000 to help poor families bury their dead.

Mary Jane said while the money used to come from the family’s own pockets, the availability of public funds through pork made it possible for the clan to give more.

“That amount was just a help to the family. Now there is a system of giving a bigger amount through the PDAF,” she said.

Ortega’s P70-million pork in 2011 included a P50,000-item for burial under the Comprehensive and Integrated Delivery of Social Services program in La Union’s first district.

Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. was drawn into the pork barrel scandal because some of his pork supposedly went to Napoles’ NGOs.

But his mother, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Marcos, has not steered clear of controversies hounding pork use by other legislators.

In 2011, Mrs. Marcos used P55 million of her pork for multipurpose buildings and road improvement in towns like Batac and Pinili, as well as for indigent healthcare.

From 2012 to 2013, she used P40 million, in four tranches, to build the Batac Cultural Center.

Other projects

Before his conviction, detention and release from a Hong Kong jail on drug possession charges in 2011, Ilocos Sur Rep. Ronald Singson used P18 million of his pork in 2009 on various provincial projects and appropriated the rest for indigent healthcare and scholarships.

In 2010, Singson used P13.5 million in pork for infrastructure projects, electrification for Vigan City, scholarships and indigent healthcare.

His younger brother, Ryan, assumed the district’s congressional seat during his detention and used P61.6 million in pork in 2011 for improving schools, buying farm and school equipment, and building roads in Ilocos Sur.

In 2009, then Isabela Rep. Faustino Dy III used P20 million in pork for projects in Cauayan City, but reserved up to P500,000 for indigent care in the National Kidney Transplant Institute, the Cagayan Valley Medical Center, Philippine Heart Center, Philippine Children’s Medical Center and Lung Center of the Philippines.

In Apayao province, Rep. Eleanor Bulut Begtang used P13.6 million of pork for 2010 on Philippine Health Insurance Corp. premiums, scholarships, indigent healthcare and rural electrification.

At the time of the Inquirer’s visit to the Ortega family last month, a group of teachers from Don Mariano Marcos State University arrived with a resolution asking for P4 million to build six classrooms.

But all pork releases have been stopped because of the outcry following the scandal. Ortega said with no pork, he would have to forward the request to the Commission on Higher Education.