Cayetano: SC ruling on pork barrel just a step in curbing corruption

Senator Allan Peter Cayetano INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines- Senate Majority Floor Leader Alan Peter Cayetano on Friday described corruption in the Philippines as “entrepreneurial” and the Supreme Court’s judgment on the Priority Development Assistance Fund is just “a step” in curbing the country’s woes.

Cayetano told reporters in a press briefing at the Bonifacio Global City in Taguig that the high court’s decision declaring PDAF as “unconstitutional” was only a third of the proccess in eradicating corruption in the country.

“The solution is to clamp down and really identify and apprehend those corrupt officials,” Cayetano said. “That’s why the prohibition of the pork barrel is just a third of the battle.”

Cayetano listed down the three steps in the nullification of corruption as “the abolition of PDAF, the passage of the Freedom of Information Bill, and the capture of those corrupt officials.”

Aside from the steps, Cayetano also described corruption in Philippine politics as a business and stressed that even without the PDAF, corrupt officials could find ways to fill their pockets with the people’s money.

“Those who stole from the pork barrel, will they realize, will they wake up or tell themselves that ‘I’m not doing this anymore,’” Cayetano said. “No, they will find ways to steal from the public funds.”

“During the time of then president Joseph Ejercito Estrada, there were officials who stole from rice earnings, then rice was prohibited from the spending of legislators, but the corrupt officials switched to medicines and books.”

Cayetano said that businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles used the same structure to rake-in so much of the taxpayers’ money in her alleged pork-barrel fund scam.

“That’s why Napoles became so large, it started out as a program, then she switched to pork then into the Malampaya.”