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The boo-boo of the bobo?

October 27, 2014October 27, 2014 Julius Mariveles Leave a comment

Or is the poor vote a stupid vote?

WHEN one is poor in the Philippines, it is supposed that one is also stupid.

That’s why the masa – the ignorant masses – are much sought after when the elections are just around the corner. Their sheer numerical power in a country where millions consider themselves poor is too powerful for any politician, or any religious leader, to ignore.

Their numbers may vary, depending on who conducts the count. Last July this year, a Social Weather Stations survey showed that there are at least 11.5 million poor families who consider themselves “poor” as of June 2014, up by more than 600,000 in March, also this year.

Recently, the the term “mahirap” or “poor” in Filipino took on a different meaning when Senator Antonio Trillanes IV claimed that Vice-President Jejomar Binay is portraying himself as “poor” while leading a lavish lifestyle.

SEN. ANTONIO TRILLANES IV. Anti-mahirap? Elitist? | Photo from Senate of the Philippines Gallery

The senator, one of the critics of Binay in the ongoing Senate probe on the alleged corruption charges against the vice-president, was quoted as saying after a visit to the farm that the Binay allegedly owns: “ang nakita natin dito sa ocular visit na ito ay ‘yung dalawang mundo ni Vice President Binay. ‘Yung isang mundo na nagpapanggap siya na asal-mahirap, na galing siya sa hirap na maki-mahirap. Even pati ‘yung kulay niya pinagmamalaki niya na ‘I am mahirap’.”

(What we are seeing here in this ocular visit are the worlds of Vice President Binay. One is the world where he pretends to be poor, that he comes from the poor. He is even proud that his color is like that of the poor.)

Netizens were angered at Trillanes over his comment. Some called him elitist, a charge that he now denies, saying that his statements were distorted by the camp of Binay.

VICE-PRESIDENT BINAY, left, with President Benigno S. Aquino III. Is Binay pretending to be poor? | Photo from PCOO

The Vice-President, responding to the allegations, called those behind what they called as the “Oplan Stop Nognog 2016″ are “elitists” and “anti poor” for calling him “kulay-mahirap” and “asal-mahirap.”

But what exactly is the poor vote? Is it really an “unthinking” vote?

In 2004, PCIJ Founding Executive Director Sheila S. Coronel and Yvonne T. Chua wrote a two-part series on the characteristics of the so-called poor vote. It’s key findings include:

The poor ranked education, experience, platform, and track record as among the most important criteria for choosing candidates.

They do not necessarily have high regard for the wealthy and powerful. What they do have are idealistic notions of leadership, valuing qualities such as piety (makadiyos), helpfulness, sincerity, and responsibility.

Celebrities are not necessarily preferred by poor voters. Many said they value educational qualifications, but they were also suspicious about those with superior education. They said experience and good intentions more than compensate for a lack of college education.

The most import sources of influence in the choice of candidates among the poor are, in declining order: the media, the family, the church, and political parties. Surveys come in last on the list.

Coronel and Chua also reported:

“While elections are seen as a spectator sport, the poor are not passive spectators. They cheer on or boo and take part wholeheartedly. ‘Perhaps their ambivalent attitudes toward elections are subsumed by the notion of a game of chance, which provides elections with an inherent validity as well as entertainment value,” says the IPC report. “Hence, they will participate in it by following certain criteria and principles. Most are not swayed by survey results. But, given their material needs, they will also take advantage of the money and goods that circulate widely at this time, if they can somehow escape the consequences.’”

Click on the photo below to continue reading the story “The poor vote is a thinking vote.”

A SUGARWORKER in one of the haciendas or plantations in the Philippines | Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

Track budget documents real-time

September 15, 2014September 15, 2014 mcmangahas Leave a comment

IT IS A BUDGET decked with pork before and huge lump-sum or special purpose funds to this day. Many citizens are wont to believe that the budget is a document that hides more than it reveals.

Yet still, in terms of the simple availability of budget documents to the public – and not accountability in how funds are being spent r the integrity of the data enrolled int he documents — the Philippines seems to be doing quite well in a league of 30 mostly poor, developing countries in the world.

It is the only one of the 30 countries that has so far made major budget documents available, or even readily downloadable from the websites of the spending agencies.

On Sept. 12, 2104, the US-based International Budget Partnership (IBP) launched a new tracking tool, the Open Budget Survey Tracker to provide real-time information on the availability to the citizens of eight essential budget documents. By international good practice in budget transparency, these eight must published in a timely manner.

Research teams have been assigned to work with the OBS Tracker in 30 countries. Monitoring work started in November 2013 and will end in June 2015.

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), the Philippine researcher, has used as reference the budget calendar, which the agencies have adopted mostly by established practice. Thus far, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), Bureau of the Treasury (BTr), and the Commission on Audit (COA) have made the following documents available, covering three fiscal years: 2013, 2014, and 2015:

* 2015 Pre-budget Statement (PBS)
* 2015 Executive Budget Proposal (EBP)
* 2014 Enacted Budget (EB)
* Citizen’s Budget for EB and EBP
* In-Year Reports (Cash Operation, Revenues, Expenditure, and Debt Reports from the BTr and Status of Allotment Releases, Report on Utilization of Cash Allocation, and Disbursement Performance Reports from DBM)
* 2013 Mid-year Review
* 2014 Year-end Report
* 2012 Annual Audit Report

Of the 30 countries covered in the OBS Tracker, 14 are in Africa, 7 in Asia, 6 in Europe, and 3 in South America. In Asia, Philippines performed better than Kyrgyz Republic, Timor Leste, Vietnam, Palestsine, Iraq, and Myanmar, by the standard of making budget documents publicly available on time.

In the other countries, many budget documents were available for internal use only by officials. The citizen’s budget and mid-year review were commonly not produced. The non-disclosure of these documents to the public, according to the IBP, “leaves critical gaps in the public’s ability to understand how public money is being managed and, ultimately, assess how well the government is doing in delivering essential services such as health and education.”

In truth, the OBS Tracker is limited only to providing information on the timeliness of the public release of budget documents. It does not offer an assessment on the quality and comprehensiveness of the information enrolled in the documents. Neither does it capture the availability of data on the spending of lump-sum or special purpose funds that are relevant to current issues such as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) in the Philippines’s case.

The OBS Tracker, nonetheless, complements the Open Budget Survey (OBS) that the IBP conducts in 100 countries every two years. At best, the OBS Tracker gives monthly updates on the availability of key budget documents. The Open Budget Survey, meanwhile, remains the definitive source for assessment of the broader public budget system within a country.

While less comprehensive than the Open Budget Survey, the timeliness of the OBS Tracker “allows governments to be recognized almost immediately when they take steps to be more transparent and enables stakeholders to track progress, identify gaps, and press for improvements,” the IBP said.

“Covering over 100 countries, the Open Budget Survey is the gold standard for assessing government budget transparency and accountability,” IBP Executive Director Warren Krafchik said in a press statement. “However, the research, analysis, and review for this comprehensive assessment takes two years, which creates significant gaps in monitoring and encouraging government improvements. So, we developed the OBS Tracker to provide certain fundamental budget information on a more frequent basis.”

“The OBS Tracker complements but doesn’t replace the full Open Budget Survey,” Kraftchick said. “It is like a thermometer or blood pressure gauge in that it can indicate the overall health of the system and identify where there might be problems, but it cannot provide a complete diagnosis.”

With help from the OBS Tracker, “governments that are opening their budgets will get the immediate recognition they deserve, and those that limit information, or restrict it further, will not be allowed to escape scrutiny.”

The IBP conducts the OBS every two years to assess governments’ budget transparency through a 100-point scale called the Open Budget Index (OBI). PCIJ has served as the Philippine researcher of the OBS since 2006.

The 30 countries covered by the OBS Tracker were, by and large, “drawn from among the least transparent as measured by the Open Budget Survey, in order to see whether having more up-to-date information will be a useful tool to encourage governments to improve transparency.”

Visitors to the OBS Tracker website will get an updated snapshot of how countries are doing, look at trends for each country over time, and download the actual budget documents that governments are publishing. – Rowena F. Caronan, PCIJ

PNoy holds ‘power of’ purse’; Congress holds ‘coin purse’?

August 15, 2014August 15, 2014 mcmangahas Leave a comment

CONTRARY to the spirit and letter of the Constitution, in practice it is the Office of the President, not Congress, which holds the power of the purse, according to former national treasurer Leonor Magtolis Briones, lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines (SWP), a budget transparency group.

In a press conference on “The 2015 Budget and Congress’ Power of the ‘Coin Purse’” on Aug. 14, 2014, Briones lamented that the legislature’s vaunted power “has been diminished through the years.”

This is evident, she said, in what she called the 2015 “election budget” that enrolls “lump sums, automatic appropriations, and off-budget directs remittances.”

“Lump-sums indicate an inherent vulnerability in the budget because of limited transparency and accountability in handling these funds,” said Briones, a professor emeritus of the University of the Philippines.

Because the Executive controls the bulk of the budget, Congress is left only to holding “the power of the coin purse,” she said in a press statement.

By its calculation, SWP said that the proposed total expenditures of P2.758 trillion in 2015 consists of P2.606 trillion in proposed appropriations,P123 billion in Unprogrammed Expenditures, and P29 billion off budget accounts and direct remittances from the Philippine Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) and Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).

“The Appropriations Act which will be approved by Congress totals P1.740 trillion,” Briones said. However, of this, “only agency budgets of P1.361 trillion will be debated in great detail while P866.231 will be automatically appropriated,” or less than half of the total expenditures.

Of the proposed P2.758-trillion expenditures, Briones said Congress will likely debate in detail only P1.361 trillion of government agency budgets, including P761.231 billion in Personnel Expenditures that is generally accepted by Congress as presented by the Executive.

This leaves only P599.769 billion for detailed Congressional scrutiny, she said.

Among others, Briones said the “significant lumps” in the proposed budget include the President’s Special Purpose Fund (SPF) of P378.603 billion.

Commonly referred to as “the President’s pork,” she said only the Department of Budget and Management could release these funds with the approval of the President.

In addition, Briones said there have also been “significant increases” in other lump-sum funds, including:

* Allocations for Local governments, from P19.589 billion in 2014 to P33.131 billion in 2015;

* Budgetary Support to Government Corporations, from P46.255 billion to P61.319 billion; and

* Miscellaneous Personnel Benefits Fund, from P53.53 billion to P118.142 billion.

The total amounts for SPFs increased from P282.569 billion to P378.603 billion in the 2015 proposed budget.

According to Briones, these items indicate that the 2015 budget proposal could well be “an election budget, where the government cranks up spending on infrastructure and visible projects to create the impression of growth.”

“Ruling parties can use these projects their advantage for re-election. However, the growth might be superficial it would be very challenging to sustain the same levels of growth,” Briones said.

On Debt Servicing, Briones cited that “while government is planning to borrow a total of P700.822 billion, it will only receive P310.435 billion for both peso and foreign borrowings due to costs of borrowing and other charges.”

Debt servicing is also usually overstated by the Executive as a means to liberally move around funds in the budget, she added.

“Executive control is apparent in the proposed budget. After the budget is passed, Executive power may even disregard the Congress’ approved budget altogether,” Briones said.

She noted that Rep. Ben Evardone of Eastern Samar, an ally of President Benigno S. Aquino III’s Liberal Party, had submitted a bill that, if passed, would redefine savings and allow the Executive to declare and pool “savings” any time within the year.

Last August 1, Briones recalled that Budget Secretary Florencio Abad submitted a proposed bill to redefine savings and unprogrammed expenditures.

This development, she averred, could further diminish Congress’s power of the purse.

“Proposals to redefine ‘savings’ to accommodate practices similar to the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) in the future also further diminish the Congress power of the purse, as it allows the Executive to liberally move funds around beyond the limits of the budget law,” Briones said.

SWP Co-Convenor Isagani Serrano, meanwhile, urged that the national budget be used to address social inequality in the country, adding that the budget in previous years have failed to do so in the pass.

“With our high numbers of growth and gross domestic product (GDP), we also have high rates of unemployment, poverty, and hunger,” said Serrano, president of the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement.

He cited that the proposed budget shows that “there has been virtually no improvement in these social indicators,” citing “stark regional disparities among the major islands in the Philippines, with 63 percent (of the proposed 2015 budget) going to Luzon, 16 percent to the Visayas and 21 percent to Mindanao.”

“This is in spite of the fact that the poorest provinces are located in the Visayas and Mindanao,” he said.

“The budget explicitly says that it was crafted for the poor, and with Yolanda (Haiyan) heavily affecting the Visayas, you would have expected more allocations to the Visayas,”

“This isn’t the case,” Serranno said. “The budget is even sorely lacking in addressing climate change adaptation and disaster preparedness.”

Briones exhorted lawmakers to reclaim the legislature’s power of the purse. This is necessary, she said, “to reclaim the balance of power sin government, something that is an important component of our democracy.”

Baboying pork

August 13, 2014August 13, 2014 Ed Lingao Leave a comment

Agri producers, hog raisers call for probe on smuggling of “expired” imported meat

Philippine agricultural producers and hog raisers called on national government officials to probe the alleged smuggling of at least six million kilos of “expired” imported meat that did not pass the country’s required quarantine tests and food safety examinations.

The Samahan ng Agrikulturang Industriya (SINAG) said conflicting data from two government agencies, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI), point to the possibility that at least six million of “expired” imported pork are now in the Philippine market.

SINAG said data they have obtained from sources in the BOC showed that the agency released 121.6 million kilos of imported pork from January to June this year but official figures from the BAI showed that only 116 million kilos passed through quarantine inspection, pointing at the possibility that 5.6 million kilos are “unaccounted for.”

Vicente Mercado, chairman of the National Federation of Hog Farmers, Inc., said the director of the BIA and all meat imported should “come forward and disclose the amount of meat they imported this year.”

He added that they should also release other important data like the dates of arrival, quarantine inspection certificates, the places where the importations were brought, and the names of companies or restaurant chains that received the imports.

SINAG chairperson Rosendo So, on the other hand, called on Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala and BOC Commissioner John Philip Sevilla to probe the alleged missing imported pork. “Bakit nakakalabas sa BOC ng walang quarantine clearance at bakit walang quarantine officer to check on the imported meat?”

(“Why were these released by the BOC without quarantine clearance and why was there no quarantine officer to check on the imported meat?”)

Mercado said their discovery about the missing “expired” imported pork comes at “critical period” after a group of meat importers said that is alright for the public to eat expired meat as long as these are frozen.

“These meat importers have no business in the food industry as they pose the greatest threat to our public health security. Kung gusto nila, sila na lang ang kumain at ‘wag na idamay ang pamilya at mga anak natin,” So said.

He also pointed out that the meat importers’ position is alarming, coming as it is in the face of the recent expired meat scandal in China where the Shanghai Husi Company was found to be supplying expired meat to several fast-food chains.

Pork is one of the agricultural commodities that are being smuggled into the Philippines. A study funded by the Department of Agriculture and the results of which were released this year showed that agriculture produce being smuggled into the country is valued at $10 billion yearly.

The study, titled “An Assessment of Smuggling of Selected Agricultural Commodities in the Philippines,” also showed that agricultural smuggling evolved into a big-time illegal trade starting in the 1980s.

President Aquino, in a message delivered by Agriculture Sec. Alcala last April 2014, assured hog-raisers that the government is committed to ending meat smuggling.

“We have been directing our government offices especially the DA to intensify its efforts in impeding meat smuggling to give local hog raisers the opportunity to gain better incomes,” he said.