MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Aug. 15, 2013) – Human rights group Karapatan has joined the mounting calls for the abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund which includes the social fund of President Benigno Aquino and local government officials.
Cristina Palabay, the group’s Secretary General, said the pork barrel is not only a source of corruption but it also violates the people’s rights to essential social services.
“Instead of using the fund for education, health, housing and other services that will directly serve the people, it passes through another unnecessary layer, where unscrupulous politicians and their agents take advantage of, for their personal gains,” Palabay said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
Karapatan also censured the position of Aquino in favor of maintaining the pork barrel, despite growing public clamor for its abolition in the light of allegations involving corruption of P10 billion in government funds allegedly by businesswoman Janet Napoles with the complicity of executive agencies, legislators and local governments.
“It is more infuriating to hear how the President downplayed the P89.2 million released by the Department of Agriculture, under his administration, to a bogus NGO, placing it in contrast to the P728 million fertilizer scam and other corruption scandals during the Arroyo regime. He desperately tries to portray his administration as the lesser evil,” Palabay said.
Karapatan noted that Aquino used the same “lesser evil” logic with regards to his administration’s human rights record, in an attempt to tone down criticisms on continuing extrajudicial killings and other human rights violations under his government.
Palabay said: “Even a single centavo stolen from the public coffer is still and, definitely is, corruption and a blotch on the “straight path” Aquino so often flaunts about; just as a single extrajudicial killing in his time is a smudge of blood on this path.”
Day of Action
Youth groups led by Anakbayan, National Union of Students of the Philippines and Kabataan Partylist are set to hold campus and community protests to call for the abolition of the pork barrel system and an end to “continuing corruption” under the Aquino administration.
Students and youths will blow whistles and hold noise barrage activities in various campuses around Metro Manila starting August 16. Expected to participate in the “Day of Action vs Aquino Pork and Corruption” are students and faculty from University of the Philippines Diliman and Manila, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, University of Santo Tomas, Unibersidad De Manila, De La Salle University, Philippine Women’s University, Adamson University, and others.
“It’s time to take action. We are disgusted and outraged over the Aquino administration’s defense of porky lump sum funds. This shows that the tuwid na daan is a path to further corruption,” Vencer Crisostomo, national chairman of Anakbayan, said.
Crisostomo said the arrest order for Napoles is just the beginning and should not serve to cover-up the bigger crime that is the pork barrel system and the corrupt set-up.
“It seems they are setting up Napoles and relatives to be fall guys for the bigger criminals. We need to make the Aquino government accountable, we will not let-up until pork barrel is abolished and lump sum funds rechanneled to social services,” he said.
He said Aquino’s pork barrel, reportedly amounting to P1 trillion should be looked into. Corruption controversies involving the president’s “Kaklase, Kapartido and Kabarilan” should also be investigated.
Various youth groups also have re-convened Youth Act Now, a broad alliance formed in 2008 instrumental in mounting big youth protests against the Arroyo administration.
“This is a start. We are calling on everyone to revive the mass movement for genuine change. Let us start holding actions in our campuses, communities and workplaces and mount big protests in the coming days,” Crisostomo said.
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