Non-abolition of
pork barrel violates people’s rights to social services
By KARAPATAN
August 15, 2013
QUEZON CITY – Karapatan
today joined the call for the abolition of the Priority Development
Assistance Fund (PDAF) or the so-called pork barrel, which includes
the social fund of the President and local government officials.
Cristina Palabay, Karapatan
secretary general, said that “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 elaborated.
Karapatan also censured the
position of Pres. Noynoy 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
by 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 commented.
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 asserted that “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.”
“The Aquino government
cannot be absolved by the mere lesser number or amount of corruption,
neither by the mere lesser number or frequency of extrajudicial
killing and enforced disappearance. Its reaction on the pork issue is
comparable to its promotion in rank of alleged perpetrators in the
Burgos and Morong 43 cases, tolerating the perpetuation of impunity.”