What is a Pork Barrel ?
+Below is a good explanation of what a pork barrel is.
Pork barrel is an American budget/ funding process from government to spend for localized projects secured solely or primarily to bring money to a representative’s district.
The usage originated in American English. In election campaigns, the term is used in derogatory fashion to attack opponents. Scholars, however, use it as a technical term regarding legislative control of local appropriations.
The Philippines being once a colony of the US, the Philippine government adopted and “adapted” this from its colonial masters but added its own extra twist!!!
The Filipino Pork Barrel appropriation was ultimately and sadly given a ‘unique’ treatment by successive Philippine governments, whereby those meant to benefit at the bottom never or rarely received the full benefit it was meant for. Basically the money is siphoned off at various stages.
But explaining what happens to pork barrel in a nutshell goes like this.
As an example, a senator secures P200M to build a new bridge in his constituency. The senator will ask someone he knows already from his golf club to get the bridge done. He will only release P150,000,000 (P50M is now his pocket money , some pocket money!!!) to this friend/cohort who in turn will keep P30,000,000 for himself and look for an architect/engineer, preferably a relative or a friend, to make plans for the bridge with P120,000,000 budget. The architect/engineer will keep P20,000,000 for himself release P100,000,000 to a contractor, again a relative or a friend, who will keep P10,000,000 to himself and will buy materials from a relative’s hardware stores/shops at a mark up prices and then subcontracted the building of the bridge to someone else. The subcontractor will get his percentage too, then hire relatives and friends to build the bridge at their on time. The bridge will be built but done in the cheapest possible way. This scenario goes on all the time. In most government projects. Pseudo Non Government Organisations (NGOs) are created whereby chosen NGO ‘officials’ take their cut. Work may get completed but the quality suffers and is not long-lasting and sustainable
It could be said that as the British saying goes many have ‘their noses in the pig’s trough’ 😉 taking their fill leaving a remnant of the budget for actual project work.
JXXX
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Understanding the Pork Barrel
August 18, 2013 | Politics & Government
Source: Pugad ng Maharlika
Everyone in the loops and cobwebs of the Pork Barrel scam is guilty. None in the houses of corruption would point a finger or raise a fist to protest against this mother paker of all scams. While the media is grilling Napoles and those bombs, explosion and stupid collision of big ships would want to draw out public perception from this scam, citizens wouldn’t blink an eye to monitor every bit of news related to the scam. Why? Because each one of them (or us) feels robbed by the rotten system of loops and cobwebs of layers of deceit and deception. Why? Because the taxes from simple candies, cigarettes, toyo and suka that we buy from the sari-sari store goes to the treasury that will be a part of the pork barrel recipe.
Each time we renew our license and customs would tax us exorbitantly of the parcels we sent through Fedex we are ripped off once these taxes and fees becomes a fraction of the source of the infamous PDAF. Nonetheless the understanding of the citizenry should not stop at the house of Napoles na mukhang mapapanis na sa media. This should go beyond napoles where from the different sources, verified or otherwise, gives us the total picture of how the pork barrel system works.
The budget or budgeting is a function of government that provides the whole bureaucracy the oil to make each of the the machinery of each departments and agencies run smoothly. It starts with the call of the CEO to have every offices under his command to provide him the budget for deliberation for the coming year.
The process begins and ends with the CEO. The figure / diagram is self explanatory. The next thing is we should understand the layer upon layer of the web of men and women, organizations, agencies, departments etc. and how these relationships work. At the top are the offices of the DPWH, the Office of the President and the Houses of Thieves. They have the biggest allocation in the government budget that is solely designed to favor them. The second layer are the power brokers that includes those government employees that works within these agencies/offices; the private citizens like Napoles with their NGOS; and the NGOs that have been created by the politicians in the Houses of Thieves. This layer is responsible for the haggling and higgling of percentages.
The last part of the process would be the approval part… who approves the releases… they are pictured in the diagram. Who benefits from them are the assholes who have their luxury SUVs parked in front of the hotels and posh restos that we see everyday. Now aren’t you wondering why the Philippines is so fucked up economically?
What we need is to ask Ban Ki Moon of the United Nations to bring in a fact finding commission on this scam. Everyone in the bureaucracy is on the take.