Pork barrel as the magic wand
What drives senators and congressmen to steal amounts one cannot spend in a lifetime?
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What drives senators and congressmen to steal amounts one cannot spend in a lifetime?
The pork barrel fund is an interesting phenomenon that one can readily consider a magic wand. Despite the Supreme Court declaring it unconstitutional in 2013, the pork barrel rather than perish, has persisted.
In fact, in 2025, it might have reached a level of perfection than has ever been recorded in Congress’ entire legislative history. Ton upon ton of P1,000 bills that could fill a condo or luggage upon luggage in criminal amounts transported in vans were delivered to top officials of the land in the comforts of their homes. This seamless Corruption 101 is truly a masterclass on how to bastardly loot awesome stacks of taxpayer money from the sacred government coffers, nulli par.
What drives senators and congressmen to steal amounts one cannot spend in a lifetime? On the average, one becomes a congressman by garnering from 50,000 to 150,000 votes at the district level; while for a partylist representative one needs to get around 300,000 votes or two percent of the voter turnout.
Whereas to become a senator one needs to win from 13 million to 15 million votes nationwide largely on “name recall,” which puts celebrities at a big advantage. This conveniently benefited a Tito, Robin, Jinggoy, Bong, Lito, even Manny, who all spent the least to campaign.
Philippine politics, if Prof. Felipe de Leon is to be believed, is a relationship. Given our unique and distinct culture of “kapwa,” politics traverses a whole range of relationships in our communicative language and is familiar to everyone of us.
For being relational, politics therefore ensures a win or an advantage to someone who was a celebrity before he joined the world of politics. At the House of Representatives, hence, we have a Richard, Lani, Jolo, Angelika, an Arjo. The truth is, it is less ideal for the Senate to be populated by celebrities than for the House; it almost amounts to a “bad omen,” come to think of it.
When top elected officials loot the people’s money, does a senator loot only from the 13 million voters or the congressman from the 50,000 voters in the district that put him in office? By and large, these “white-collar thieves” stole from 117-million Filipinos who paid their taxes so the state could survive and sustain itself.
As the saying goes, “outlaws always go home.” But can the taxpayers really march en masse in front of palatial homes located in gated communities? Laws in place have even become the shields of these “criminals” who can display dignity in official behavior as if they hadn’t done so grave a wrong? Only in the Philippines, you might say.
And yet, how much does it cost an individual to get a new career lottery win in politics? If a congressman manages an annual allocation of say P100 million from which he or she can carve out a return on investment, a single term of three years equivalent to P300 million or so of congressional allocation will more than recoup the much lesser amount spent to win.
If he or she got generous contributions, it might have been really a “free ride” from start to finish. Why would anyone spend so much who knows how to game the political psyche, the bureaucratic culture, the personality cult?
As for senators, each is said to have three times more than a congressman in an annual budgetary allocation. Worse, such discretionary allocation goes for the long six years of a single term, unlike in the House.
Abraham Lincoln will rise from his grave when he realizes that in this country, not “all men are equal.” Indeed, that some are more equal than others may be an understatement. In the end, the politics that we have now is best likened to a “new career lottery.” It is indisputably the best of all possible worlds.
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