Php 500 per Vote

It is not my intent to deprive destitute and hungry Filipinos – of whom there are millions – of the few crumbs that the Arroyo Government plans to throw in their direction from its scandalously over-stocked banquet table.

My purpose in this piece is to point out the fallacies and false promises of this initiative, and to suggest instead what I think would be a better alternative.

According to Social Welfare Secretary Esperanza Cabral, in the April 27 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, her department will soon dispense monthly cash hand-outs to the 300,000 poorest families in the 20 poorest provinces.

The basic dole-out will be P500 per poorest-of-the-poor family, plus P300 per child, with a maximum of three children per family. Thus the maximum dole-out will be P1,400 per family per month, to 300,000 families. Since almost all Filipino families have more than three children, that would amount to P420 million a month, or P5.04 billion in one year.

If they were to start this program – called Ahon Pamilyang Pilipino (APP) – this month, by April 2009, its budget of P5 billion would have been exhausted.
And then what?

Having accustomed 300,000 poor families (or at least 1.8 million destitute people) to receiving monthly cash hand-outs for one year, without their doing an honest day’s work, can President Arroyo afford to stop?

Of course, not. She has to keep going. And because millions of other destitute people would be clamoring for their share - to the point of causing civil unrest in the face of escalating food and fuel prices - she would have to expand APP to cover, not just 300,000 families, but perhaps three million families, or even more.

(Both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have estimates of the number of Filipinos living on less than $2 (P85) a day. They number much more than three million. A Social Weather Stations survey in February 2007 showed that 3.4 million households – or more than 20 million Filipinos – had experienced hunger at least once in the previous three months. That number must have increased even more in 2008.)

Keep in mind that 2009 is the run-up to the 2010 presidential elections. Keep in mind that the initiative to amend the Constitution is still on track. A ChaCha Road Show was launched by Albay Gov. Joey “Bitch” Salceda last February 11 and is still on the road.

Sen. Nene Pimentel and his 11 apostles, have unwittingly (or perhaps wittingly) aided the Arroyo Game Plan by pushing for a ChaCha to convert the Philippines from a unitary state to a federal union, and he wants this to happen before the end of President Arroyo’s term in 2010..

Is Sen. Pimentel really so naïve that he cannot see that, once his federalism ChaCha constituent assembly is convened, the Gloria in Excelsis Dado cumbancheros in Congress will chime in: “Since we are already debating federalism, we might as well debate parliamentary also.”
The overwhelming Kampi and Lakas majority in the Lower House would, to no one’s surprise, shout in unison: “We should! We should!” and then burst into the Hallelujah chorus, if they knew the words.

Now what can Sen. Pimentel and his 11 senatorial apostles possibly do to stem the parliamentary tide and prevent President Arroyo from doing a Vladimir Putin to remain in power beyond 2010? Absolutely nothing. The numbers would be stacked against them.
It is in this light that one must view the Ahon Pamilyang Pilipino (APP), which can also be seen to mean Ang Pangulong Pang-habangbuhay.

In my view, it is a devious and manipulative scheme to buy signatures for the ChaCha referendum in 2009, and votes for the parliamentary elections in 2010 or, alternately, presidential elections without term limits..

At P500 per vote per month, or P5 billion per year, that is equivalent to just the $130 million (P5.4 billion) overprice in one contract, the aborted ZTE deal. Only God and the Chinese know how much overprice there was in the 26 other contracts that the Arroyo Government signed with them.

But aside from the political machinations implicit in the APP, there is also the mendicant attitude that such dole-outs cultivate in the minds of the recipients.

This is a classic illustration of the truism that if you give fish to a starving person, he or she will be able to stave off starvation for one day. But the following day, that person will be starving again.

But if you were to teach that person how to catch fish, he or she would not go hungry again. The APP is the fish that President Arroyo wants to give to the poor every month, without teaching them how to catch fish for themselves.

Lastly, there is the problem of implementing such a literally cash-rich program, which will attract all kinds of scam artists faster than anyone can say Magkano ba ang akin? Let’s face it. We have not been adjudged the Most Corrupt Country in Asia for the past two years for nothing.
Unless President Arroyo can find an army of nuns – the type who saved Jun Lozada from being silenced or killed – to run this program, I would assume that a great part of its budget will magically attach themselves to the sticky fingers of officials and bureaucrats, from Malacanang to the lowest barangay. Perhaps that is the main idea.
If I were president, I would not give hand-outs even to the poorest of the poor. I would instead organize them into manufacturing and service co-operatives, to produce goods and services for which there is a real need and demand.

By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on April 30, 2008
For the Standard Today,
May 01 issue