SR. EMELINA Villegas, a friend of the late Fr. Jose “Joe” Dizon, speaks during a tribute for the activist priest at San Roque Cathedral in Caloocan City. JOAN BONDOC
ROSARIO, Cavite—President Benigno Aquino should heed calls to abolish the pork barrel system in its entirety or lose his popularity ahead of the end of his term in 2016.
This could be one of the last pieces of unsolicited advice that the late activist priest, Fr. Jose “Joe” Dizon, gave the Aquino administration before he died.
In an interview at the Workers’ Assistance Center here on Oct. 22, several days before he died, Dizon said he believed public clamor for the abolition of the pork barrel and all its forms was now overwhelming and that Mr. Aquino should heed it before his term ends.
Dizon died on Nov. 4 of diabetes complications.
Dizon, however, acknowledged that without pork barrel, “P-Noy will end up a lame duck President.” The Aquino administration has been accused of bribing legislators to oust Renato Corona as Supreme Court chief justice using pork barrel funds.
Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was also widely believed to have used the pork barrel to keep legislators in tow, especially at the height of the impeachment case against her over allegations of massive election fraud, which the House of Representatives overwhelmingly junked.
Without pork, Dizon said Mr. Aquino may lose the loyalty of legislators, especially in the House.
Despite his deteriorating health, Dizon in September joined the series of antipork barrel protests. The pork barrel has taken on different official terms. Previously known as the Countrywide Development Fund, it is now known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund.
Protesters, however, are now defining pork barrel as any lump sum amount in the national budget over which legislators, or the President, exercise wide discretion. The President alone, according to Bayan Muna Rep. Neri Colmenares, has a pork barrel fund of up to P200 billion.
Mr. Aquino, in a nationally televised 12-minute speech last week, defended the government’s use of funds under the Disbursement Acceleration Program, which critics said was nothing but pork, too.
According to Dizon, the scandal that erupted after the Inquirer expose on the theft of up to P10 billion in public funds through the pork barrel, which ended up in bogus nongovernment organizations formed by alleged pork queen Janet Lim-Napoles, simply became the clearest sign of corruption in the government.
The people, Dizon said, now had a clearer picture of how public funds were lost to corruption.
He, however, expressed lament that some people, especially those in the government, had come to accept corruption as a part of life.
He cited as an example public works officials who connived with private contractors to build substandard roads and share kickbacks in the project that amounted to 60 percent of the project cost for the officials and 40 percent for the contractor.
“That’s why our roads always end up broken,” said Dizon.
He said corruption, through the pork barrel system, is not just filching but a way of really “amassing” ill-gotten wealth.
“Even if P-Noy were honest, what about those after him? What about the people surrounding him?” said Dizon.
He said corruption was not “simply theft but [it] has become endemic.”
Dizon, during the interview, revealed plans by the groups he was helping to organize the Council for National Unity and Reconciliation and Moral Recovery, a broad alliance that would identify early on honest people to run in the 2016 elections.