Church folk plan protest march, rally in Batasan

A coalition of Catholic clergy, religious and laity will troop to the House of Representatives on Monday to ride herd on the final deliberations on the P2.26-trillion national budget for 2014 amid the public clamor for the complete abolition of the graft-tainted pork barrel system.

Fr. Ben Alforque, convenor of the newly formed Church People’s Alliance Against Pork Barrel, on Friday said the group will gather at the House of Representatives in Quezon City to send lawmakers a clear and loud message that the Church and the faithful are against the pork barrel.

“We will go to Batasan and hold an ecumenical service there so our congressmen will be guided by the Holy Spirit and not by the evil spirit,” Alforque told reporters on Friday.

“We also like to know right away what is the result of the deliberations,” he said.

The Lower House has approved on second reading House Bill No. 2630, or the proposed budget for 2014, without touching the P450-billion “special purpose funds,” which critics have referred to as the President’s own pork barrel.

The House members ostensibly removed a total of P25.4 billion in the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the congressional pork barrel funds, from the P2.268-trillion national budget for next year when the bill was passed on second reading on Sept. 28.

The PDAF funds were realigned with several government departments, but lawmakers retained the right to refer their chosen beneficiaries for scholarships and medical assistance to the departments and propose infrastructure projects for inclusion in the budget as line items.

The third and final reading has been set for Oct. 14, the day lawmakers return from a two-week break.

Follow-up action

Alforque on Friday noted that the group’s move on Monday would be a “follow-up” action to urge the Aquino administration to finally scrap the widely abused PDAF, the formal name of the pork barrel, as well as the newly created Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

The group led parishes across the country in ringing church bells for three minutes at 1 p.m. Friday in a show of solidarity for the abolition of the pork barrel.

Parishes under the jurisdiction of the Archdiocese of Manila, considered the principal see of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines, and 21 other dioceses and archdioceses all over the country joined in the simultaneous pealing of the bells Friday, said Alforque.

The priest hoped the sound of the bells was loud enough to have awakened the conscience of Mr. Aquino, who has rebuffed calls to scrap the DAP—through which the Department of Budget and Management has been allowed to scoop up the savings of other departments and use them for other purposes—and prosecute all the politicians who have dipped their hands into government coffers.

“The moment they hear the bells, they can’t deny anymore the extent of the people’s cry for this pork barrel to be abolished,” said Alforque.

He also hoped that the ringing of the bells would encourage corrupt officials to return the money they stole from the public and allot it for education, health and housing for the poor.

“We also encourage the faithful to continue praying for the abolition of the pork barrel in all its forms, including DAP … and the principle of transparency, justice and accountability will prevail,” he said.

Noise barrage vs DAP

Students, vendors, churchgoers and doctors yesterday held a simultaneous noise barrage in Manila in protest against the DAP.

Led by the #ScrapThePork Alliance, mock “wanted” posters of Senate President Franklin Drilon, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and President Aquino were posted along Taft Avenue. The three were tagged as “The Hol-DAP Gang.”

“We are warning our people to be more cautious and vigilant these days as the Hol-DAP Gang remains to be at-large. Behind our backs, this gang and their cohorts are continuously defending the pork barrel system and DAP which tolerates systematic corruption in the bureaucracy,” said Mark Louie Aquino, spokesperson of the #ScrapThePork Alliance.

“It is indeed an irony for President Aquino to brag about his anticorruption drive while it consistently wants the pork barrel and other questionable funds like the DAP to remain and exist. We are in extreme doubt about the seriousness of this administration to resolve the old-age problem of bureaucratic corruption in the country,” he added.

The “Mag-Ingay Tayo” activity on Friday was the second protest following the Sept. 20 event participated in by students from San Sebastian College, San Beda College, College of the Holy Spirit, Arellano University, University of Santo Tomas, among other schools.

Vendors from Luneta Park, churches along Taft Avenue including St. Scholastica’s, Iglesia Filipina Independiente, St. Vincent de Paul Parish and Sta. Cruz Church, and doctors and patients from the Philippine Children’s Medical Center joined yesterday’s noise barrage. Together with students from Araullo High School, Philippine Christian University and Philippine Women’s University, the participants numbered about a thousand.

Other schools who were supposed to join canceled their participation because of the rains.