Is the PDAF an equalizer?

MANILA, Philippines – Has the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) or pork barrel of lawmakers been the great equalizer it was intended to be?

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that pork barrel is constitutional because the practice is “a recognition that individual members of Congress, far more than the President and their congressional colleagues are likely to be knowledgeable about the needs of their respective constituents and the priority to be given each project.”

It also pointed out that the Countrywide Development Fund (the precursor of the PDAF) “attempts to make equal the unequal.”

The Court stressed that before this practice came to be, there was an “uneven allocation of appropriations for the constituents of the members of Congress, with the members close to the Congressional leadership or [those] who hold cards for “horse-trading,” getting more than their less favored colleagues.”

Members of Congress, according to the High Court, “also had to reckon with an unsympathetic President, who could exercise his veto power to cancel from the appropriation bill a pet project of a Representative or Senator.” 

Going by data on PDAF releases from 2010 to 2013 (as posted on the website of the Department of Budget and Management), pork barrel funds do not appear to help equalize the distribution of scarce resources.

The map below, which shows regional per capita distribution of the fund releases, indicates that some regions have benefitted more from the fund than others. Factors that affected distribution included: uneven population distribution among districts, regional bailiwicks, and plain politics.

(Note: The DBM published only the per-region breakdown of the PDAF releases for district representatives. The per-senator and per-partylist representative totals were computed based on the stated region and provinces of the projects.)

Who got the most pork?

Going by total releases, the table below shows that the National Capital Region and Region 4A Calabarzon, and Region 3 Central Luzon received the largest amounts of PDAF in the last 3 years.

Table 1. PDAF releases per region in millions of pesos

 

To some extent, this is justified as these regions also host the largest populations, with populations exceeding 10 million each, in 2010.

If we divide the releases by population in the regions, the areas that received the highest per capita share of the PDAF are the Cordillera Administrative Region, followed by the Bicol Region (Region 5).

Comparatively, Regions 7 (Central Visayas) and 12 (Socsksargen) received the lowest share of the PDAF per person. Region 12 includes the provinces of Sarangani, North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat, which are among the poorest provinces in the country.

Table 2: Per capita PDAF releases per region

 

The boxes colored yellow orange in the table above indicate the top 5 choice regions of the 3 types of legislators (senator, party-list representative, district representative) who provided their PDAF. The boxes colored maroon indicate the regions in the bottom 5 that got the least allocations per type of legislator. CAR consistently emerges in the top 5 for all types of legislators. Among senators and party-list representatives, however, Caraga lands in the bottom 5. Only among congressional representatives does Caraga land in their top 5 regions.

Poorest provinces under-represented

If, as the name implies, development need was the basis for the distribution of the PDAF, poorer provinces should have gotten a larger share of resources. This was clearly not the case with the PDAF releases.

Region 12, which covers provinces with some of the highest incidences of poverty in the country, has the lowest PDAF releases per capita.

The problem is that districts, to begin with, are not evenly cut throughout the country. Some districts also have a larger population than others. Table 3 shows that in 2010, Region 12 had the highest average population per district.

Table 3: Number of districts per region

 

The Cordilleras got more in terms of per capita distribution because it has the smallest average population per district. In contrast, districts in Region XII had the largest average population at 587,082.

Unreleased district shares

For sure, politics figures prominently in the uneven distribution of PDAF allocations. For the years 2010 to 2013, each congressman was supposed to get up to P70 million per year from the PDAF. But 4 members of Congress did not receive any share at all:

• Dato Arroyo of the 2nd District of Camarines Sur, former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s son

• Iggy Arroyo of the 5th District of Negros Occidental, Arroyo’s brother-in-law

• Mitos Magsaysay of the 1st District of Zambales, a close ally of Arroyo

• Augusto Syjuco of the 2nd District of Iloilo, another close ally of Arroyo

In 2011, 93% or 211 of the 229 district representatives had their entire PDAF released to them. 14 got amounts ranging from P53 million to almost P70 million.

It was only when Rep Iggy Arroyo died and was replaced by Alejandro Mirasol, a member of the Liberal Party, that Negros Occidental’s 5th district finally got its entire P70-million share in 2012.

Create more districts?

Since amounts are fixed per district, the only other way to increase sums released per capita is to decrease the number of people per district. This is possible by creating new districts.

Article VI Section 5.4 of the constitution mandates the reapportionment of legislative districts 3 years after every census. In reality, the reapportionment process is driven by political factors, with laws that re-apportion the districts being passed piecemeal.

And even if the proposals creating the new districts make it through the legislative grinder, this is still no guarantee that funds will help spread development equally across regions. Though badly in need of development, regions with smaller populations will clearly be put at a disadvantage. – with Rey Santos Jr/Rappler.com

 

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