MANILA, Oct. 2, 2013— The head of the Catholic bishops’ leadership is calling on President Aquino to take his fingers out of his ears and listen to the growing public clamor for the abolition of the pork barrel.
The people have spoken, said Cebu Archbishop Jose Palma, and they want the now infamous Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) junked.
“The sentiment of the majority is to scrap off the PDAF including the presidential pork barrel,” said Palma, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
“This supposed opportunity for goodness was used in a bad way,” he said. “Many have affirmed that the pork barrel has been a source of corruption (in the government).”
‘Delicadeza’
Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo, for his part, appealed on Aquino’s “sense of delicadeza” amid the growing disgust over the systematic corruption via the pork barrel.
The Congress, he said, should not have been given pork barrel because after all, he said, legislators were elected to craft laws.
“How come this concept of pork barrel is so hard to scrap? It should be abolished and the President must show that he has no interest in it,” he said. (CBCPNews)
