Wielding Power Via The Pork Barrel

This is something.

Putative Senate President Frank Drilon supposedly telling President-apparent Noynoy Aquino to “ignore” the anti-impounding proviso in the budget law that prevents the chief executive from withholding pork barrel releases on the basis of such unspoken parameters as loyalty to the party in power.

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/insideNews.htm?f=2010/may/22/news2.isx&d=2010/may/22

But there are two sides to this that the incoming president will be well advised to consider:

1. The anti pork barrel impounding thingy was actually authored by Senator-elect TG Guingona, one of the only four winning Liberal Party senatorial bets, and
2. The President actually still has his own distributable pork barrel coming from what’s called his Social Fund (coming from the PAGCOR and PCSO kitties, not to mention the OP unauditable intelligence fund.

Together these monies run into billions of pesos.

So Senator Drilon may want to have his staff do a bit more reading to better advise their chief executive.

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