Category: Investigative Reports

PDAF wins elections, favors political parties

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

IT WAS FORMER SPEAKER Jose de Venecia who once said that the key to winning the Speakership of the House of Representatives was a person’s ability to keep members of Congress happy. Of course, with generous portions of pork.

The same still holds true more than a decade later, as the pork barrel funds remain the key ingredient in getting legislators reelected, keeping ruling parties stocked and packed with members old and new, getting allied parties to toe the line, and building coalitions of convenience.

In the third part of the PCIJ series on Pork a la PNoy, we look at how the pork barrel system has help craft, some say warp, the political party system, and how even the minions of Malacanang, despite the catchy slogan of Tuwid na Daan, still see the need to pave the road with pork.

Read Part 3 of the series:

PDAF wins elections,
favors political parties

‘Chop-chop’ contracts mar PDAF projects

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

THE CONCEPT OF tingi is probably one of the more popular, if not practical, ways that Filipinos deal with economic realities.

But what works with shampoo sachets and cigarettes apparently does not work with billions of pesos in pork barrel funds.

In the second part of the PCIJ’s special report on the Priority Development Assistance Fund, otherwise known as the pork barrel, we look at how public funds are wasted as legislators do road repair and infrastructure projects on a “retail” basis to maximize their public exposure to their constituents.

The report also reveals a startling fact – that our legislators apparently are so enamored with the idea of organic funding that hundreds of millions of pesos are poured every year into organic farming projects – apparently to no noticeable effect.

Of course, money poured into organic farming projects are harder to track, unlike infrastructure projects where visible structures must be erected.

For a sidebar, the PCIJ looks into government agencies that face the chopping block for their alleged involvement in the pork barrel scam. But even without the pork barrel scandal, these agencies should have caught the attention of the government because of apparent massive mismanagement that costs the government tens of millions of pesos a year,

Read Part 2 of the series:

Same, same bad pork: ‘Chop-chop’
contracts, duplicate projects, etc.

Pork mess toll: 5 state firms, 283 civil servants

Abuse, misuse of PDAF under ‘Daang Matuwid’

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

IN AUGUST this year, President Benigno S. Aquino III did the seemingly unthinkable: He announced the abolition of the pork barrel.

The trouble was that he did not really abolish the pork barrel system; what he did abolish was the pork in its current form under the Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF.

In its place, Malacanang has drawn up a new mechanism to do roughly the same thing – allow lawmakers to identify projects in their districts to be funded with public money.

In fact, legislators have already started submitting the list of projects they want funded under this new system to the Speaker of the House, who in turn transmitted the lists to the Department of Public Works. And as DPWH Secretary Rogelio Singson tells PCIJ, he has had to return many of the congressmen’s lists because they looked so much like the old lists from the old abolished system.

By all indications, the new mechanism is basically the same pig with a different name – pork for patronage, public funds for political gain.

In the first part of the PCIJ’s new series on the politics of pork, PCIJ Executive Director Malou Mangahas and Research Director Karol Ilagan look at how the 15th Congress spent its pork under the PNoy administration, and how some of the same problems of pork remain unchallenged in the new system.

Read Part 1

Abuse, misuse of PDAF linger under ‘Daang Matuwid’

Paul Aquino on PCIJ story

markku Leave a comment

In response to the PCIJ’s three-part series on “Money Politics and the May 2013 Elections,” Mr. Paul Aquino, father of Sen. Paolo Benigno ‘Bam’ Aquino IV, sent an email to the PCIJ on October 3 asking why he was mentioned in the second part of the series about donors who have links to sectors that are regulated and therefore prohibited from making election contributions.

Mr. Aquino said he had replied to the PCIJ’s earlier inquiries into his past involvement with the Energy Development Corporation and Greencore Geothermal Corporation, and as such saw no need for his name to be included in the story.

The PCIJ looked into the profiles of the major campaign donors of the 12 winning candidates for senator and conducted an extensive background check on them. Mr. Aquino’s name was one of many names that came up during the initial research in June 2013. For this reason, the PCIJ sent Mr. Aquino’s office a letter-request for an interview at least three times.

The first letter was faxed to Mr. Aquino’s office on June 8. After several subsequent calls, Mr. Aquino’s secretary asked for another faxed letter. His secretary also informed the PCIJ that Mr. Aquino was still in China and may not be able to respond to the letter-request yet.

A third follow-up letter was faxed to his office on August 6.

On September 2, Mr. Aquino sent an emailed reply to the PCIJ inquiries.

We are reproducing his email in full here:

Dear Mr. Corrales,
This is in response to your letter dated August 6, 2013.
I was out of the country and I came to know of your letter only today.
I have retired as an officer and director of Energy Development Corporation
and it’s operating subsidiaries as of July, 2010.
Paul A. Aquino
P.S. I would appreciate a written receipt of this email. Thanks in advance

On October 1, the PCIJ released the first of its three-part report on “Money Politics and the May 2013 Elections,” where donors with links to sectors that are prohibited from making contributions were identified.

In the story published October 2, Mr. Paul Aquino was mentioned as donating P 10.2 million to the campaign of his son Senator Aquino. It was stated in the story that the elder Aquino had been heavily engaged in the extractive industries “until his retirement in 2010.”

In fact, the story quoted Mr. Aquino’s email as saying that he had retired in July 2010 from Energy Development Corporation and all its subsidiaries.

The segment in question appears below:

“Aquino received as well a campaign contribution of P 10.2 million from his father Paul Aquino, who had been heavily engaged in the extractive industries, particularly in geothermal energy extraction, until his retirement in 2010.

Prior to his retirement, Paul Aquino had been president and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Development Corporation, in 2004, when it was still a government-owned and -controlled company under the Philippine National Oil Company, and carrying over the position well past the EDC’s privatization and sale to the Lopez group in 2007.

After 2007, Paul Aquino also became president of Green Core Geothermal Incorporated, a generation, distribution, and transmission company owned by the Lopez group.

Replying to inquiries sent by PCIJ, Paul Aquino stressed that he is no longer connected with the EDC or any of its subsidiaries.

“I have retired as an officer and director of Energy Development Corporation and its operating subsidiaries as of July 2010,” the older Aquino said in an email.”

On Oct. 3, Mr Aquino again wrote the PCIJ, asking why he was still mentioned in the PCIJ story.

Mr. Aquino’s Oct. 3 email is shown below:

Dear Mr. Corrales,
There is a PCIJ report that states that my contribution to my son’s campaign is
questionable.
I believe I have answered your letter dated 6 August 2013 sufficiently. To repeat,
I have retired from EDC and all it’s operating subsidiaries as of July, 2010. Such
date is more than 2 and a half years before the election of May 2013.
Why you have included me in your report puzzles me. What gives?
Paul A. Aquino

The PCIJ story is about contributors who have links to sectors that are barred from making campaign donations. As President/CEO of the Energy Development Corporation for six years, first when the EDC was still a subsidiary of the Philippine National Oil Company, and later when the EDC was privatized and sold to the Lopez Group, and as President of GreenCore Geothermal until his retirement in 2010, Mr. Aquino was heavily engaged in the extractive industries that are barred from making election contributions.

It is clear in the story published on Oct. 2 that the PCIJ does not in any way assert that Mr. Aquino is still working for these companies; in fact it was emphasized twice, both through the text of the story and through the quotes from Mr. Aquino, that he had already officially retired in 2010.

However, the PCIJ believes that it was worth mentioning Mr. Aquino’s previous and deep engagement with both EDC and Greencore considering the positions and length of time that he served in these two corporations that are branded the largest geothermal operators in the country.

‘High rollers’ rule Senate elections

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

IN THE PHILIPPINES, the few give a lot, and the many give little.

Unfortunately, we are not talking about charity here. We are talking about campaign contributions.

In the third installment of the the PCIJ’s “Money Politics and the May 2013 Elections” series, we look at the huge disparity between the donors and the amounts they give to fund the campaigns of Senate hopefuls.

To better illustrate this, the PCIJ categorized the donors according to the amounts they gave: The Taumbayan, or those who could not afford to donate a million pesos for a campaign; the Millionaires’ Club, or those who donated P1 million to P4.9 million; and the High Rollers, or those who donated P5 million and above just to send someone to the Senate.

The results of our research may surprise you; then again, maybe not. Politics, it is said, has become the exclusive realm of the rich.

Read Part 3 of the story:

‘High rollers’ rule Senate donors,
give P795-M in campaign funds