By Mortz C. Ortigoza
On my recent TV interview with Davao City’s Congressman Karlo Alexei
Nograles, Chairman of the powerful Appropriation Committee, he told me that
congressmen don’t identify the recipients of their projects in their district
because it was unlawful.
I disagreed.
I told Nograles, who is rumored to have a moist eye for the Senate,
that in my province even the losing bidders get three percent of the allocated
funds from the government that is shelled out to them by the winning bidder
after the moro-moro or for show’s tender in mockery of the Procurement
Law.
The Lower House of the Philippines Congress. |
I said I was thankful between the wrangling of House Speaker Pantaleon
Alvarez and his erstwhile best friend Davao del Norte Rep. Tony Boy Floreindo many Filipinos learned that their conflict did not zero on the “mani’
(mistresses’ clits to put humor on the pussy, er, poser)” but real people’s “money”
that Alvarez muscled out to deprive Floreindo, Rep. Imelda Marcos, and 22
opposition congressmen.
Without their entitlement to identify the recipients of their
multi-million pesos projects, congressmen will be deprived with the twenty
percent or more S.O.P or Standard Operational Procedure that goes to their
personal pockets.
Cut for the
Solon
Here’s a private contractor that
would collaborate my thesis that congressmen and his favored contractors rob
the coffer that resulted to substandard services and infrastructures to the government.
In ten million pesos farm-to-market road he told me how the Filipino
people are fleeced into this perennial malpractice.
“15 percent
lang ang tubo ko diyan. 15 percent bigay ko sa congressman, 5 percent sa DPWH
(Department of Public Works & Highway) bigwigs and the boys nila to divide,
and 10 percent kay mayor,” he enumerated.
He cited that before he wins the bidding for the project
at the DPWH, he first gets the nod of the other two bidders who would quote the
first two highest bids to make the project so they would lose while my source,
who bids the lowest ten million projects wins.
“I will give them P300 thousand to divide among them
or to those other bidders who are interested to the project”.
When I asked him how much he shell-out to the
village chief that will sign their approval of the completion work, he told me
he gives the “Kapitan” P5000.
“Pag maganda ang mood ko at humirit ang kapitan na
bigyan din iyong mga kagawad (members of the village’s legislative council),
binibigyan ko sila ng P10 thousand”.
To quantify how government funds are pocketed, the
narrations say: More than 45 percent goes to those people I mentioned, while
the Republic of the Philippines settle for the more than 50 percent or more
than P5 million of the P10 million farm-to-market road from the taxpayers’
monies.
My other sources told me that in other projects if
the congressman or congresswoman is greedy, government settles for the crumbs or
the 40 percent while 60 percent of the funding is divided by the solon and those
other vultures.
This scenario of how the public monies, be it P10
million or 100 million are swindled and gouged, my informant said, are endemic all over the
Philippines.
Solons want to
tinker with the funds
Here’s the friction in 2016 that ensued between a group of congressmen and
former Secretary Judy Taguiwalo of the Department of Social Welfare &
Development when she was defending her budget at the August Chamber.
Representatives Rudy Farinas, Alfredo
Garbin of Bicol Partylist, and Arnie Teves of Negros Oriental lectured her that
the solons have the power of the purse to appropriate funds to government
departments like DSWD.
That power, according to them, allows them to
identify as recipients their poor constituents.
Taguiwalo, a straight shooter who despised how solons
want these funds, told them the DSWD Memorandum Circular 9 she signed does not
intend to bar congressmen from endorsing beneficiaries.
The Secretary maintained, however, that the
Circular seeks to stop the practice of congressmen getting favored projects in
the DSWD after she received information that there was an allocation of
projects for lawmakers even after the Supreme Court scrapped the pork barrel.
“Ang point lang namin, ang DSWD ay willing
makipagtulungan sa mga representative. Pero hindi po puwedeng parang may entitlement na may milyon kayo,” she told them.
The issue here, son of a gun, is simple:
Congressmen, several of them graduated with Bachelor of Laws at Ateneo de Manila and the University of the Philippines, had stooped
too low by asserting themselves to identify tens of millions of projects
because they want to get the 20 percent S.O.P (slang for cut) from their
favorite private contractors, a source told me.
Despite being mandated by the Constitution that
congressmen make laws while those in the executive department implement the
law, this old practice persisted because of quid pro quo between Malacaรฑang and Congress where
Senators and Congressmen expedite the passing of the bill the President wants
in exchange of the “pork barrel” where the solon can get their cut.
Execs, solons caught in
a hidden tape recorder
Here’s a tape recorded conversation between high executive officials
and some congressmen that would refute the denial of the members of congress
that unlawful entitlement still ensues in the government.
Pork barrel is alive and
kicking, even after the Supreme Court struck off the Disbursement Acceleration
Program, if based on the pronouncements in August 2014 of Commission on Higher
Education (CHEd) Chair Patricia Lichuanan and Health Undersecretary Janet
Guarin.
Both said, as taped by the staff of ACT Teachers Congressman Antonio Tinio, that all the P14 million budget for scholarship of the Commission on Higher Education in every congressional district, and all the Medical Assistance Program (MAP) in every government hospital have been intended for the recommendation of the congressman who are the real recipient of that project.
Both said, as taped by the staff of ACT Teachers Congressman Antonio Tinio, that all the P14 million budget for scholarship of the Commission on Higher Education in every congressional district, and all the Medical Assistance Program (MAP) in every government hospital have been intended for the recommendation of the congressman who are the real recipient of that project.
“There
are many people out there, who really think I now have P4.1-billion new
scholarships. They don’t think it’s the PDAF, they don’t think it’s going to
you (lawmakers) … And then I’m supposed to tell them ‘No! No! Don’t do that,
because actually the congressmen are all going to get it,’” Licuanan said.
“We have to go through
this kind of semblance. We understand each other. I really want to cooperate,” she continued.
She
also confided that her regional directors actually thought they had an extra
P14 million in scholarship grants for each district so she had to tell them
that this was “really for the congressmen,” as written on August 12 by the
Philippine Daily Inquirer’s titled “Party-list rep presents ‘smoking gun’
on pork”.
The same article said: “Tinio
also revealed a recording of Garin, a former Iloilo Representative, during a
meeting between officials of the Department of Health (DOH) and House members
last May 20 to iron out the “chaos and confusion” on the medical assistance
program (MAP) of lawmakers inserted in the 2014 budget.
Garin said the MAP would only
be available to individuals recommended by lawmakers or their designated staff.
Now here’s my poser: Have you not seen your congressman or
congresswoman and his or her family flaunting their wealth while they don’t
have any big business to show how they source those monies and “manis”?
“How can that man
buy one thousand pesos per head of vote when he has no conspicuous business
while the money I used to buy votes come from my family business?” a then government high official asked me by lambasting an incumbent congressman when they clashed in a congressional election
where each spent hundreds of millions of pesos to buy votes for a position that could
not even give one hundred thousand pesos monthly salary.
READ:
READ:
Contractors, Gov’t Officials Tell-All How Ph is robbed
(You can read my
selected columns at http://mortzortigoza.blogspot.com and articles at
Pangasinan News Aro. You can send comments too at totomortzmarcelo@gmail.com)
These SOPs have been the "standard" corrupt practices that enrich the politicians. If this Government is really serious in eradicating or lessening this evil act, they should start cleansing their ranks", i.e. politicians who are into this evil acts."
ReplyDeleteMORTZ ORTIGOZA: Happy New Year Mayor Joselito F. Pinol, my next governor, salamat sa pagkadlaw !
ReplyDeleteVM LITO PINOL:
Tuod gid tana ng imo ...sobra na gid sila ka damol guya!...pero kung pahambalon mo sa mga comm meetings daw wala mga sala...Happy New Year lang gihapon ...kadlawan ta lang...Laughter is the best medicine bay...
REY SANTOS: Time of panot ginawa ang aming mga kalsada, konkreto at may patong pang aspalto. Napaganda ng siyudad. Mga ilang buwan lang nag-reblocking agad utos ni abaya (daw). Ngayon bukol-bukol na kahit sementado at aspalto. Mabuhay si Panot !!!