The Pork Barrel Makeover

So yesterday Aquino made the move to finally kill off Pork Barrel:

Amid public outrage over misused public funds, President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III has called for the abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or the "pork barrel." [Yahoo News]

This is good news. The budgets funds are not entirely abolished. That's impossible, but the administration had promised to create a better system that hopefully would lessen corruption.

1. Consumable soft projects – such as medicines, fertilizers, and training materials, to name a few – will not be approved unless it will be proven that people will benefit.
2. Quick infrastructure projects, such as dredging and asphalt overlays, are out.
3. Non-governmental organizations and select government-owned and -controlled corporations (GOCCs) will no longer be allowed to be used as fund channels.
4. Lawmakers can only fund projects for their district or sector.
5. Government bidding processes and budgets will be publicized. [Rappler]

Incidentally, I sat in this forum at school regarding the Priority Development Assistance Fund yesterday. My mind was in and out the talk since the speaker had the smallest voice and I barely heard a thing. But this female speaker then came up and gave a more understandable discussion on what is truly happening with the budget allocation of the country

Apparently, after giving the budget of a certain project to the implementing agency (ex: Dep-Ed, national government units, etc.), the money would be transferred to the service provider/s (suppliers, NGOs, contractors, etc.) Then within in this transaction comes the magic shit, a.k.a. the kickbacks.

kick·back  [kik-bak] noun
1. a percentage of income given to a person in a position of power or influence as payment for having made the income possible: usually considered improper or unethical.
2. a rebate, usually given secretively by a seller to a buyer or to one who influenced the buyer. 

Personally, I feel that it was really badass how the government had overlooked this system for many years until now, goes to show the population of crocodiles we the citizens of the Philippines have voted for.

So anyway, here come the Napoles issue of fake NGOs and millions of Pesos. How these guys managed to sleep at night is one of the greatest mysteries of humanity, seriously they are one pile of batshit crazy bitches. I hope that whatever the president has in store for the future, it will yield good results.