By SAMMY JULIAN
Manila News Bureau Chief
MANILA — Bona fide overseas absentee voters (OAVs) were urged to take part in institutionally halting the so-called lump sum allocations in the Philippine national budget.
They can sign up for the anti-pork barrel People’s Initiative, an act allowed by the Filipinos’ right to directly initiate statutes and call for referenda on both the national and local government level, a Filipino migrant rights watchdog said.
There is no legal or statutory prohibition for an OAV to sign up for such People’s Initiative, said John Leonard Monterona, regional coordinator of Migrante–Middle East.
Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who are not OAVs but were registered voters in a local legislative district were also urged to sign up, Monterona said.
“We are also calling our fellow OFWs to urge their kin in the Philippines to sign the People’s Initiative bill,” the Riyadh-based OFW leader said in a statement.
Signing up for the bill is a concrete manifestation of the OFWs’ “rejection of the graft-ridden pork barrel that only perpetuates political patronage and dirty politics of bureaucrat-capitalists,” Monterona stressed.
He disclosed that his group is poised to issue an advisory to all OAVs “to guide them where to go and sign up.”
Thousands of Filipinos signed on Monday the People’s Initiative to force the Aquino administration to finally abolish the Priority Development Assistance Fund, or the pork barrel.
The protest aims to gather some six million signatures nationwide.
Under the proposed People’s Initiative bill, pork barrel is defined as “a lump-sum public fund with sole discretion given to the President, legislator or group of legislators, or any public officer on how it will be spent.”
In a People’s Initiative, the goal is to collect at least 5.2 million signatures representing at least 10 percent of registered voters nationwide for the bill to become law. The number should also represent at least 3 percent of voters in each legislative district.
The pork barrel system, copied from the United States, is a lump sum appropriation in the national budget whose release is determined by members of the legislature supposedly for local government projects.
Since its inception, however, a large portion of the pork barrel fund has been diverted by unscrupulous politicians to their own pockets.
Three senators — Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla Jr. — were facing plunder charges for their alleged involvement in the diversion of pork barrel funds from the intended beneficiaries to bogus nongovernment organizations, with the money allegedly finally ending up in their own bank accounts.
Suspended from the Senate, they are now in jail in a military camp in Manila along with businesswoman Janet Napoles, the alleged scam mastermind.
Under Philippine laws, the three senators, who have all denied the charges, cannot be released on bail unless ordered by the Sandiganbayan, the graft court./PN
