EVEN AS P-Noy prepares for his 100th day in office, something has been happening under his nose to make one wonder if he knows what his subalterns are doing. Or about his determination to compel them to hew to the daang matuwid rather than the daang baluktot.
That is the way his budget secretary, Butch Abad, has been allocating budgets to various offices. Either he is possessed of sheer inspiration or sheer madness. Particularly mind-boggling are these two cases.
One is the amount of money he wants to lavish on Ricky Carandang. This was reported last week, but was lost in the haze or blaze of other news. Carandang is one of the two communications secretaries, the other being Sonny Coloma. Carandang handles the messaging and Coloma handles the operations, or so their designations say they should. Given his duties, Carandang proposed a budget of P80 million for his office. Figuring that was too lush, Executive Secretary Jojo Ochoa cut it down to P50 million. Now here’s the wonder of it. Abad didn’t just defend Carandang’s original budget, he jacked it up all the way to P200 million! That was what he submitted to Congress.
Two is the amount of money he is willing to give the Department of Interior and Local Government and Department of Social Welfare and Development and the amount of money he is willing to take from everybody else. Other offices have taken huge cuts in line with P-Noy’s policy of austerity, the DILG and DSWD have gotten huge hikes in line with his subalterns’ desire for prosperity. Look at the contrast: The key shelter agencies submitted a budget of P11.649 billion, but Abad recommended only P5.641 billion, or a 51.7 percent cut. At the same time, he raised the DILG budget to P86.9 billion from P65.6 billion, a 32.7 percent hike, and the DSWD’s budget to P34.3 billion from P15.31 billion, an eye-popping 123.4 percent hike.
What’s wrong about this?
Let me count the ways.
One, if I recall right, the DILG and Communications figured prominently in the bungling of the hostage crisis. The DILG gave the police bad guidance and Communications gave the President bad advice. It not only left a lot of dead bodies, it left a black mark on the country and its President. Now, if I were the secretary of health or education, why shouldn’t I allow a plague to riot and ignorance to flourish just so I can find favor with my budget secretary?
Two, how in God’s name can the budget secretary know more than the communications secretary what he actually needs? I’ve heard of budget secretaries telling departments heads, “No, what you’re asking is too much.” This is the first time I’ve heard of a budget secretary telling a department head, “No, what you’re asking is too little, let’s double it. No, that’s not enough, let’s triple it. No, that’s still not enough, let’s quadruple it.”
Three, while at that, why on earth would you need P50 million, let alone P200 million to formulate or craft the President’s messages? All you need is a PC or laptop, and a little transportation money and allowance to hang around in places where you might get to feel the public pulse. Those places do not include hotels and posh restaurants, where you might feel only a private pulse. Best to follow the trail of journalists: Cheap bars and smoky joints have a way of yielding precious insights. Or giving a sense of life in the streets.
Four, a good amount of the money that is going to the DILG and DSWD—P6 billion—they have earmarked for housing projects. So the brilliant logic here is this: Take money to build houses from an office tasked with housing and give it to an office that has nothing to do with housing to build houses. The irony was not lost on Edgardo Angara who wondered why anyone would want to give a job to anyone without a core competence in it—at great cost to the taxpayer.
Dinky Soliman, social welfare head, says her department has the vital task of tending to the needs of the poor, so that you talk against the DSWD, you talk against the poor. What arrant nonsense. What is this, the work of the other departments has nothing to do with the poor? You produce food, you help the poor. You fight crime, you help the poor. You educate minds, you help the poor. The last especially so since it teaches the poor how to fish rather than gives them fish. It gives the poor dignity rather than gives them alms. Efren Peñaflorida has done so much more for the poor than Soliman, and he never had billions. All he had was a pushcart.
Quite apart from that, why limit the DSWD’s and DILG’s forays into housing? Why not give them money to build schools too, to build clinics too, to recruit crime fighters too, indeed to do the things the other departments are doing? Surely the poor need those too? In fact, why not make the DSWD and DILG super-bodies and collapse everything into them? In fact, why not just abolish the other departments?
Five, the DSWD and DILG are headed by Dinky Soliman and Jesse Robredo who are friends of Balay and HUDCC by Vice President Jejomar Binay who is an enemy of Balay. That is really all there is to it. That is the only reason Abad feels free to be generous with the one and stingy with the other. Which is all very fine, except for one thing: That is not his money.
That is the people’s money. That is the taxpayers’ money. That is our money.
That is how cronyism starts, with the people in power favoring a few friends, saying they are better than others, they are more capable than others, they are smarter than others. That is how corruption starts, with the people in power proposing that what is good for them is good for the nation, what makes them richer makes the nation richer. That is how waywardness starts, that is how the vine withers, that is how hope is dashed on the rocks.
The daang baluktot is lovely, dark and deep. Heaven help P-Noy remember he has promises to keep.
