The P10 billion pork barrel scam: The Leviathan revisited

Thinking about the alleged scam that involved the funneling of lawmakers' Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) also known as “pork barrel” into bogus Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), I can’t help myself asking some questions.

 

How can a select few in our country freely appropriate billions of people’s money to themselves without transparency and accountability?  How can a select few squander so much of the people’s money without any sense of guilt?  How can a select few steal billions of the people’s money without any fear of reprisal or being punished?

 

Now that a whistleblower had openly exposed the fraud and the affected officials are all busy denying, obfuscating, or feigning ignorance to extricate themselves out of the mess, the fact remains that the nation’s coffer had been emptied with an estimated P10 billion worth of alleged misused pork barrel fund as reported by the Commission on Audit (COA).

 

Perhaps this sort of scam is not new.  Maybe, it has been going on for a long time.  I’d even say that these scammers simply picked up where our former greatest dictator-scammer left off. 

 

The corruption is so endemic and embedded in our body politic that I wholeheartedly agree with President PNoy's observation on who and what is to be blamed.  As he aptly puts it: “officials to blame, not just system”  (The Philippine Star, August 21, 2013). 

 

Because of PNoy’s Machiavellian utility of the PDAF and his unyielding stance against its abolition, perhaps it was the intention of his spin to displace the blame away from the rotten pork barrel system towards erring individuals.  And yet, he unwittingly did recognize that the problem does exist and that it is also systemic.  For me, this intersection of the personal issue with the structural issue is the crux of the matter. 

 

Reflecting on this, I was astonished by the aptness as well as the relevance of Thomas Hobbes, a 17th Century philosopher who so perceptively wrote The Leviathan as he brooded on how to curb the “summum malum” (greatest evil) impulse that is driving individuals in their natural state to seize power in a sort of “bellum omnium contra omnes” (the war of all against all).  

 

And talking of “war of all against all” one of the alleged scammers to date, owns 28 houses and condos and 30 pricey cars. 

 

Here’s the list of the cars she owns:

1.   BMW 35

2.   Cayene Porsche CYN 78 white

3.   Chevrolet Tahoe ZAG827 gray

4.   Crosswind Pearl XPK 562

5.   Estrada Pick-up ZJB 235

6.   Ford E150 JLN 128 Red

7.   Ford E150 JLN 18 white

8.   GMC Savana xry 168

9.   Honda Civic ZDX 319 blue

10.  Honda CRV NSO245

11.  Hummer HRM33

12.  Isuzu PQU 993

13.  L300 XDC963

14.  Land Rover Defender red

15.  Mercedes Benz  XDX527 black

16.  Navigator XPL358 black

17.  Pajero WCC896 white

18. Range Rover Autobiography TIN11

19.  Starex NOQ 168 white

20. Suzuki NQF 487

21. Suzuki NOG416

22. Suzuki NOW945

23. Toyota Alphard

24. Toyota Altis XPG884

25. Toyota Hi-Lux SIM 08

26. Toyota Innova NGQ370

27. Toyota Innova NSQ568

28. Toyota Land Cruiser PSQ 169

29. Toyota Previa XPG398

30.  Toyota Vios silver

 

Given such condition Hobbes argues that “…there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently, not culture of the earth, no navigation, nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (The Leviathan,XIII.9).

 

Grasping the ruthlessness of our natural state, Hobbes carefully wraps himself with the mantle of a social contract.  Thus, The Leviathan, that is, the agreement of a strong central structure of a commonwealth to restrain the appetites and desires of individuals in their natural state and to prevent the “the war of all against all.”  

 

Although an advocate of a monarchical commonwealth, Hobbes also thought deeply of two other types of commonwealth---aristocracy and democracy.  Hobbes soliloquy doesn’t get more apropos than that when we talk about what is happening in our country.  

 

Surely, we are not a monarchical government but are we a democracy or an aristocracy?  I am inclined to think that while we call our political system a democracy, in practice, we are really an aristocracy---an assembly of a select few who possesses the power and sole discretion on how to spend or squander the people’s money.  That is why, when you have a select few especially the numbnuts who are ambitious and ethically inadequate, the aristocratic structure simply buckles under the stress of unbridled appetite of greed and self-aggrandizement.

 

In the end, we have to ask the question whether in the midst of this unrelenting aristocratic onslaught of corruption, is it still possible for us to regain a semblance of our democratic sense?

 

My answer is yes.  

 

As a start, in order to regain our democratic sense, we have to find a highly educated and ethically adequate individual who can lead us and who will scrap the pork barrel, once and for all. To date, I am glad that the Blue Ribbon Committee Chair, Senator TG Guingona has initiated the investigation of the pork barrel fiasco in the senate.  I hope something very dramatic comes out of this investigation.  Otherwise, what’s the point? 

 

Second, in the absence of a highly educated and ethically adequate leader, the people has the option to protest and march for the scrapping of the highly discretionary and corrupted pork barrel allocation.  That’s why I welcome the August 26, 2013 netizens “Tara Na” assembly in Luneta. Although, I’ll be in the province then, I will be participating in the same assembly planned in my city at the same time.

 

See you there!