Australian Journal of Asian Law, 2017, Vol 18 No 2, Article 2: 1-17

Political Corruption in Philippine Elections: Money

Politics through the Pork Barrel System
Neri Javier Colmenares♣

This paper discusses the legislative pork barrel in the Philippines, particularly the ‘CDF’, that is, the Constituency Development
Fund and similar funding for projects initiated by legislators. This paper argues that this lump sum discretionary fund is a
specie of political corruption that is inherently unconstitutional and susceptible to graft and corruption. It also compromises the
integrity of elections and should be proscribed entirely as illegal campaign financing and a violation of election laws, not least
because the discretionary nature of the lump sum amounts means it is a form of political corruption that cannot be effectively
regulated.

There is a dearth on literature on the legislative ‘pork barrel’ 1 in the Philippines, particularly the
‘CDF’, that is, the Constituency Development Fund and similar funds for projects initiated by
legislators such as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF). Fewer still are studies on
whether the CDF legislative pork barrel measures up to legal and constitutional standards for the
dispensation of public funds and appropriation of state resources. Some studies view the CDF as a
distributive tool and measure its development impact on legislators’ constituents (Ngacho and Das,
2016). Other studies discuss ways in which the CDF could be regulated to plug the corruption and
inefficiency that accompanies its implementation (Nyamori, 2009).
While it is important to analyse the economic and development implications of the CDF,
particularly its effectiveness as a distributive economic tool, there is also a need to analyse it from a
legal and constitutional perspective. Otherwise, the legitimisation of the legislative pork barrel
through reforms may compromise legal and electoral reform efforts in countries where this
phenomenon exists.
This paper aims to contribute in helping bridge this lacunae by analysing whether the CDF meets
the legal and constitutional standards for the employment of state resources under a form of
government that separates the function of the legislature from the executive, such as the Philippines.
The paper argues that the Philippine CDF lump sum discretionary fund (and any fund of a similar
nature in other countries) is a specie of political corruption that is inherently unconstitutional and
susceptible to graft and corruption. Additionally, it is a form of money politics that compromises the
integrity of elections and should be proscribed as illegal campaign financing and a violation of
election laws. Lastly, the paper argues for proscription on the grounds that the discretionary nature
of the lump sum amounts involved mean the CDF system is intrinsically a form of political corruption
that cannot be effectively regulated.
This paper’s methodology is a combination of desk research and interviews with legislators,
regulators and beneficiaries of the pork barrel system. It also draws on the personal experience of
the author, who was confronted by the pork barrel system when he was a member of the 14th, 15th
and 16th Philippine Congresses (2007-16). Having been involved in a Supreme Court challenge to the
pork barrel system, the author also reviews relevant laws and jurisprudence to test the statutory
legitimacy of the CDF system. This paper also culls data from various reports and congressional
hearings on the use and abuse of the CDF system, which consists of budgetary allocation, the

♣
Rep Neri Colmenares is a human rights lawyer and was the Senior Deputy Minority Leader of the 16th Congress during
his three terms as a member of the House of Representatives. He was recently elected Chairman of the National Union of
Peoples Lawyers, a national association of human rights lawyers. Rep. Colmenares completed his law degree at the
University of the Philippines and was awarded the Distinguished Alumni for Public Service in 2015. Neri is a Senior
Associate of the Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the Melbourne Law School. An earlier draft of this article
was presented as a paper at the workshop, ‘The Challenges of Money Politics in the Asia-Pacific Region’, Melbourne Law
School, 17 May 2017.
1 The expression ‘pork barrel’ alludes to the fatness of pork and has been equated with political largesse in American politics
since the mid-1800s (American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition).
Australian Journal of Asian Law Vol 18 No 2

processes of CDF access and release, distribution to the beneficiaries, and post enactment discretion
and accountability.
While the Philippine pork barrel system includes a presidential pork barrel and pork barrel
systems run by local government units, this paper will limit its discussion to the Philippine version
of the congressional or legislative pork barrel, officially referred to in Philippine appropriations law
as the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF). This is a lump sum fund in the national budget
intended for projects to be identified by the legislators after the passage of the appropriations law.
The first part will discuss the concept of pork barrel and the CDF system, including its budgetary
development as a spending item and the processes involved in its release. The second part will
analyse the CDF system from a legal and constitutional perspective, using data from interviews with
those involved in the pork barrel, relevant laws and court decisions, and reports on the corruption
that beset the system. Much of the information in this part comes from the author’s personal
experience, having been given access to the CDF system during his second term as member of
Congress. The third part of the paper offers recommendations, not for improving the delivery and
effectiveness of the CDF but for its proscription as an item in annual appropriations, as well as in
legislative practice.

The Philippine Pork Barrel System

The congressional pork barrel system in the Philippines is unique. The pork barrel is generally
described as ‘a particular type of constituency service through which a legislator's geographic
constituency benefits from the distribution of public works projects’ (Lancaster, 2010). Pork
barreling, as equated with earmarking, comprises ‘legislative provisions that direct federal funds to
specific projects circumventing the competitive grant making process of federal agencies’ (Wulczyn,
et al, 2016). The pork barrel system has been the subject of controversy because, although a
budgetary item in United States appropriation laws, the disbursements are ‘at the discretion of the
Senate and Assembly leaders and not subject to legislative or executive approval’ (Chen, 2010). It
typically takes two forms:
… the appropriations earmark and the categorical grant award. The earmark is centered in the
appropriations process and consists of instructions to agencies to allocate moneys directly to specific
recipients, usually for specific purposes. Earmarks are typically included not in the appropriations bill itself
but in the accompanying committee report. On the other hand, categorical grants are authorized and
appropriated by Congress for multiple years and provide distributive funding to predefined classes of
recipients. In the case of categorical aid programs potential recipients apply to a designated federal agency
for assistance on the basis of criteria prescribed in existing legislation. A review process conducted within
an agency is undertaken and awards (usually fewer than there are applications) are made (Stein, et al,
2007: 6-7).

The pork barrel has been an item in Philippine appropriation laws for decades, despite
intermittent criticism of its profligacy and corruption. It was reportedly introduced when the
Philippines was a colony of the United States (Nograles and Lagman, nd). The history of the
Philippines shows that colonial domination by the United States distorted the country’s economic
and political system, co-opted Philippine leaders to colonial policies, and corrupted the democracy
project after the Filipino revolutionaries lost the Philippine-American war of 1887. In fact, the United
States bred the oligarchy that persists to the present in the form of political dynasties. Its colonial
political innovations also enabled the growth of patronage-oriented political parties:
The key figure in the construction of American colonial rule is William Howard Taft, who between 1900
and 1913 (first as Philippine governor-general, then US secretary of war, and later US president) played a
central role in the formulation of US policy toward its largest colony. As part of Taft’s so-called policy of
attraction, the United States began to provide greatly expanded opportunities for political power to elites
who had already developed a strong economic base throughout major regions in the latter decades of the
Spanish era. (Hutchcroft and Rocamora, 2003: 262)

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It has been argued that the pork barrel under colonial rule ‘simply modernised traditional
clientelism’ 2 in the Philippines (Eaton, 2010) but its evolution into the current CDF system is now
far removed from traditional practices. The pork barrel system today, of which the CDF is merely a
small part, may be a product of historical development but it is now sui generis. Local conditions of
extreme poverty, systemic corruption, compromised integrity of institutions, inefficient delivery of
social services, regulatory capture, and very weak political parties now drive the pork barrel system
and the political corruption that accompanies it. As such, the system is mainly a product of the local
conditions, which fuel the political corruption in the abuse of state resources (Eaton, 2010: 113).
Despite this, defenders of the pork barrel, mostly members of Congress, have annually sponsored
this appropriations item, vigorously justifying it as a part of congressional function and an important
component of national development. In fact, in the midst of calls for its abolition, an undated article
justifying the pork barrel system entitled ‘Understanding the Pork Barrel’ 3 was published on the
congressional website by no less than the former Speaker of the House of Representatives. His
treatise starts with the rather dismissive statement that ‘The public cannot appreciate what it does
not understand’:
Many are obviously unaware or simply forget that no less than the Supreme Court in Philippine
Constitutional Association vs. Enriquez, et al. (235 SCRA 507 [1994]) has categorically declared that the
appropriation of the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF), the forerunner of the Priority Development
Assistance Fund (PDAF), is a valid and constitutional exercise of the congressional ‘power of the purse’.
Many more fail to see that the relatively small projects implemented under the PDAF complement and link
the national development goals to the countryside and grassroots as well as to depressed areas which are
overlooked by central agencies which are preoccupied with mega-projects.
Even more fail to realize that since the advent of the CDF in 1990 and the institution of the PDAF in
2000 up to the present, there has been no post-audit report by the Commission on Audit (COA) directly
associating any Member of Congress to a serious abuse, misuse and/or infraction in the utilization and
implementation of the much-maligned congressional funds.
Almost everyone believes that the CDF or PDAF is a cash allocation personally given to Congressmen
and Senators for their unlimited discretionary disposition without any constraint or accountability. This is
a gross misconception because Members of Congress neither handle the funds nor implement the projects.
Their authority is limited to the identification of projects and designation of beneficiaries, subject to a
specific menu. The implementation is undertaken by the appropriate government agency after an open
public bidding.

In fact, the Philippine version of the pork barrel gives legislators the post-enactment discretion
to allocate lump sum funds to projects and beneficiaries selected by them, which makes it very
difficult to regulate and almost impossible to audit. 4 This Countrywide Development Fund is akin to
the ‘Constituency Development Funds’ 5 found in many African and Asian countries. The
Constituency Development Fund’s definition is ‘decentralisation initiatives which send funds from
the central government to each constituency for expenditure on development projects intended to
address particular local needs’ (Hickey, 2010). However, this may not accurately capture the
Philippine CDF’s anomalous nature as a lump sum discretionary fund within the context of a
presidential form of government that strictly separates the function of the legislature from the
executive.

2 ‘Clientelism’ is defined in this paper as the handing out of benefits in order to get support, or strengthen such support,
especially electoral support.
3 Advocates supporting pork barrel equate the Philippine pork barrel to the American concept to justify its legality and
acceptability. For further reading on the defence of the pork barrel system see Nograles and Lagman (nd).
4 The auditing of the pork barrel funds of legislators during the period of 2007-09 was only completed by the Commission on
Audit in 2013.
5 See Zyl (2010), who described the CDF in Asian and African countries.

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While the CDF budgetary concept and implementation in the Philippines may be different from
other countries, it is noteworthy that it does have similarities to the CDF appropriations in some
African countries, although with varying degrees of discretion involved:
Constituency Development Funds (CDFs) are funding arrangements that channel money from central
government directly to electoral constituencies for local infrastructure projects. Decisions about how these
funds are allocated and spent are heavily influenced by elected members of parliament (MPs). The degree
to which these funds are controlled by parliamentarians, and the degree to which local citizens participate
in them, vary from country to country. But the defining feature of CDFs is that MPs have substantial control
over the distribution and application of centrally allocated funds, a significant break from their primary
lawmaking and oversight roles (Zyl, 2010: 1).

Additionally, the annual amount allocated to each Philippine legislator is substantially larger than
in any of the other twenty-three countries reported as having a CDF system (Kakungu, 2013) (See
Annex 1).
When the Philippine Supreme Court declared the allocation in the appropriations law of the CDF
and similar items unconstitutional in 2013, the CDF was deleted from the succeeding appropriation
laws. Its allocations were, nonetheless, inserted in the budget of executive departments with discrete
arrangements for continued access by legislators. In fact, even after the Supreme Court prohibition,
the author was asked by some colleagues in Congress if he had accessed his CDF in certain agency
budgets.
Even if the CDF no longer exists as a budgetary item, its components were inserted in the 2017
General Appropriations Act 6 allocating at least ₱ 100 million (US$ 2.01 million) to each of the 292
Members of the House of representatives, an approximate total of ₱ 29.2 billion (US$ 587.64 million)
annually, and at least 200 million (US$ 4.02) 7 for each of the 24 Senators, or a total of ₱ 4.8 billion
(US$ 96.5 million). This translates to at least ₱ 34 billion (US$ 684 million) worth of pork barrel
expenditure in the 2017 appropriations law. Some favoured legislators are even awarded projects
worth as much as ten times the allocated amount. This may be a small portion of the Philippine
budget for 2017, which was worth ₱ 3.35 trillion, but in a country where an estimated 60 million
people earn just ₱ 125 (US$ 2.52) 8 per day, it is a considerable amount for those legislators who
access 9 their CDF to enlarge voter support and consolidate patronage networks between elections,
while amassing financial resources through corruption. In fact, a member of the House of
Representatives will have access to a minimum of ₱ 240 million (US$ 4.82 million) 10 during his or
her three-year term, while each member of the Senate will have access to at least ₱ 1.2 billion (US$
24.15 million) over the course of a six-year term.

Political Corruption
Fjelde and Hegre propose a two-edged conceptualisation of political corruption that well describes
Philippine political culture (Fjelde and Hegre, 2014: 5). Political corruption is ‘the abuse of public
office for illegitimate private gain’ (Fjelde and Hegre, 2014: 4). As they correctly point out, the spoils
of graft are also employed for retaining and expanding political power. This is illegitimate per se,
regardless of whether the public officer accumulates personal resources or spends the funds on
constituents (La Jamaa, 2016: 7).

6 Interview with incumbent Rep Carlos Zarate on 26 March 2017. This amount was also confirmed by a leader of the Minority
of the current 17th Congress as the minimum amount per district congressman.
7 This amount was based on the last budget officially containing the CDF-PDAF in 2013. It may have increased when the
CDF of congressmen was increased in 2017.
8 Around 22 million Filipinos live in extreme poverty at ₱ 60 per person or much less per day, and almost two-thirds of the
population live on just ₱ 125 or less per day. Inequality persists — the combined wealth of the 15 wealthiest individuals
amounting to ₱ 2.6 trillion is equivalent to the combined income of the 77 million poorest Filipinos. Wages meanwhile are
still less than half the family living wage (Xands, 2017).
9 Not all legislators access their CDF, as some have publicly condemned its practice.
10 The average US Dollar (US$) – Philippine Peso (PhP or ₱) Exchange Rate used in this paper is US$ 1: ₱ 49.69 in April
2017.

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The expansion or retention of political power by holders of political offices happens when they turn
public resources into private goods (Fjelde and Hegre, 2014: 6). Political officials harness the state
resources of their office and the wealth accumulated through graft to not only build a network for
electoral support but also to thwart non-electoral threats to their political power by accountability
institutions and mechanisms – and there have been many instances in the Philippines when throngs
of ‘supporters’ have been able to stop the implementation of a suspension order issued by the
Ombudsman against corrupt politicians. 11
This network of exchange came about mainly as a result of established and deeply entrenched
patronage politics (The Freeman, 2007: 2, 5), a formidable base that fuels the cycle of greater
accumulation of wealth and greater political power (The Freeman, 2007). The pork barrel system
enables politicians who access CDF funds to amass more political power which in turn allows them
to accumulate more personal wealth. Banergee and Duflo (2013), quoting Acemoglu and Robertson
(2000, 2012 and 2013), have aptly described this symbiosis of embezzlement and power:
political power allows its possessors to grab economic resources, and economic resources in turn facilitate
the retention of political power, and this cycle creates an inherent tendency for economies to drift towards
concentration of both economic and political power, ending in an oligarchic equilibrium with extractive
institutions.

‘Political corruption’ is thus not confined to acts of malfeasance, misfeasance or nonfeasance that
can disappear with stricter standards and measures of accountability and increased electoral
competition (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2013: 2). The resources generated through corruption are
themselves deployed to pre-empt mechanisms intended to hold the corrupt to account. Political
corruption is therefore tightly tied to the political power relations on which holders of political offices
rely on to counter the instability (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2013: 5) that democratisation and
accountability brings, through the deployment of public resources against the very public that
demands accountability (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2013: 5-6).
Fjelde and Hegre note that these two facets of political corruption –enrichment, and political
survival or expansion – reinforce each other. 12 This is because rent-seeking politicians have more
private resources to augment the public resources available to buy political support and, as a result,
retain and enlarge their political power.

Money Politics
The concept of ‘money politics’ is narrower than that of ‘political corruption’. This paper views ‘money
politics’ as the illegitimate provision of material aid with the aim of influencing voters and vitiating
electoral will (La Jamaa, 2016). This may take the form of abuse of state or public resources or the
misuse of private goods through vote-buying but the purpose is the same – to influence constituents
and voters (La Jamaa, 2016).
Money politics should be distinguished from legitimate material aid. The difference between the
two is the intention that motivates the giving of money or anything of monetary value (La Jamaa,
2016) and the nature of the power of the giver to distribute the resources. If is proven 13 that the
intention is to influence voters and vitiate the voters will, the distribution of public resources is
illegitimate even if the giver has the legitimate authority to dispense the same. This may be harsh

11 Supporters of Mandaue City Mayor Thadeo Ouano, for example, barricaded the City Hall in the hope of stopping officials
of the Department of the Interior and Local Government from serving a suspension order issued by the Office of the
Ombudsman on the mayor. They were, however, just aggravating the situation and doing more harm than good to Mayor
Ouano. The serving of suspension orders on local government executives has been a familiar event in the Philippines
recently, and many mayors and governors have quietly accepted the orders and left the job of contesting them to their
lawyers (The Freeman, 2007).
12 See Fjelde and Hegre (2014: 5), who state, ‘These two processes of political corruption – one for enrichment, the other for
survival – reinforce each other, since the politician who is adept at expropriating rents and collecting bribes also has more
resources available to buy political support (Rose-Ackerman 1999).’
13 While some will argue that such categorisation is unrealistic, as it is difficult to prove intent, the categorisation that CDF
is illegitimate is based on legal and constitutional standards and not on the level of difficulty in procuring evidence. In any
case, motive has been established in many criminal trials by circumstantial, if not direct, evidence.

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but under art VI, Section 25 14 of the Philippine Constitution, public funds are intended for public
purposes and funding the electoral fortunes of a politician is not among these public purposes. When
legislators’ use of state resources is beyond their authority, and therefore ultra vires, the act
constitutes political corruption regardless of intention. The Philippine pork barrel system in the CDF
is inherently ultra vires because it is beyond the legislators’ authority to grant themselves post-
budget enactment discretion over the implementation of pork barrel projects and the selection of
their beneficiaries.
Abuse of government resources, or money politics, unbalances the playing field of political
competition and must therefore be abated by regulatory reforms or initiatives. The problem is
exacerbated when an entire government, not just individual politicians, deploy pork barrel funds to
bolster their respective political fortunes. An example of this is the billions allocated by the Philippine
Government for the ‘cash transfer’ programs, health insurance card projects and ‘gas subsidy’
program. 15
Lamentably, Philippine voters, as in some other Asian countries (Aspinall and Sukmajati, 2016:
127), have become increasingly ‘pragmatic’ and ‘transactional’. They have been alienated from the
political system and believe that legislators can offer them nothing useful apart from the handouts
they distribute once election campaigns begin. This voter-alienation (de Dios and Hutchcroft 2003:
260) is a distinct local condition that generates the motive for money politics in the form of the pork
barrel system.
For ordinary citizens who derive few such benefits, explains economist Emmanuel de Dios, government is
an abstraction, an alienated entity, whose only palpable dimension is the episodic patronage dispensed by
bosses and politicians, which merely reinforces the poor’s real condition of dependence. This same alienated
condition causes the electorate in many places to repeatedly elect convicted criminals, underworld
characters, and known grafters, simply because such behavior is irrelevant to the more advantageous local
clientelist functions those persons discharge, whether this be of a material nature (e.g., the local privileges
[given to the First Couple’s home regions] . . . under the Marcoses) or a symbolic one (e.g., Estrada’s image
as champion of the masses. (Hutchcroft and Rocamora, 2003: 260).

The Pork Barrel and the CDF System

CDF is also defined as ‘a generic name for a policy tool that dedicates public money to benefit political
subdivision through allocation or spending decisions influenced by their representatives in the
national parliament’ (Rockefeller College of Public Affairs, 2009: 1). This paper defines the Philippine
CDF system as the ‘use of discretionary public funds to fund projects, the nature, location, amount
and beneficiaries of which are decided solely by a legislator or a group of legislators in their individual
and not legislative capacity’. 16 This definition reflects the view of the Supreme Court, in Belgica vs
Executive Secretary, 17 when it said that the pork barrel system was:
… the collective body of rules and practices that govern the manner by which lump-sum, discretionary
funds, primarily intended for local projects, are utilized through the respective participations of the
Legislative and Executive branches of government, including its members. The Pork Barrel System
involves two (2) kinds of lump-sum discretionary funds:
First, there is the Congressional Pork Barrel which is herein defined as a kind of lump-sum, discretionary
fund wherein legislators, either individually or collectively organized into committees, are able to effectively
control certain aspects of the fund’s utilization through various post-enactment measures and/or practices.
In particular, petitioners consider the PDAF, as it appears under the 2013 GAA, as Congressional Pork

14 ‘Discretionary funds appropriated for particular officials shall be disbursed only for public purposes’.
15 These were employed in the Philippines during the time of President Gloria Arroyo and were subjects of the impeachment
complaints filed against her.
16 This was the definition used in the proposed bill of the People’s Initiative against Pork Barrel (PIAP) which the author
helped draft. See Annex.
17 Belgica vs Executive Secretary GR No 208566, 19 November 2013.

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Barrel since it is, inter alia, a post-enactment measure that allows individual legislators to wield a collective
power; and
Second, there is the Presidential Pork Barrel which is herein defined as a kind of lump-sum, discretionary
fund which allows the President to determine the manner of its utilization. For reasons earlier stated,161 the
Court shall delimit the use of such term to refer only to the Malampaya Funds and the Presidential Social
Fund.

While the Philippine pork barrel system ostensibly came from the United States, its evolved CDF
system may not be ‘on all fours’ with the US version, which is generally a form of congressional
insertion of projects or spending items in the budget and, therefore, expressly included in the General
Appropriations Act. The CDF is merely a lump sum item in the budget without specifics. Even
supposedly mild congressional insertion or earmarking was, however, subsequently proscribed by
the Supreme Court if found to grant legislators the same post-enactment discretion as the original
pork barrel system. Historically therefore, although the pork barrel was not a unique phenomenon,
its CDF version thrived especially because of the unique political and economic conditions of the
country.
While the CDF system was started by former President Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s, it was
only fully institutionalised when President Corazon Aquino allocated ₱ 2.3 billion (US$ 46.28 million)
in the 1990 General Appropriations Act 18 for the projects identified by legislators and, for no apparent
reason, by the Vice-President. One of the main reasons was to galvanise support from Congress in
the midst of threats 19 by Marcos forces against the Aquino government.
The CDF started with the allocation of a lump sum amount for the poor areas in Mindanao:
In 1989, the Mindanao Development Fund and Visayas Development Fund were created with lump sum
appropriations of P480 million and P240 million, respectively. Thus, Representatives from Visayas and
Mindanao were authorized to identify development projects worth P10 million per district. This prompted
Senators and Representatives from Luzon to assert that they similarly needed funds for their local projects.
Consequently, in 1990 the Countrywide Development Fund (CDF) was created with an initial funding of
P2.3 billion for projects in all congressional districts and the national constituency of Senators. (Nograles
and Lagman, nd)

These lump sum amounts were appropriated yearly thereafter until the Supreme Court handed
down two decisions in 2013 20 declaring certain types of appropriation to be pork barrel funds, and
prohibited them as unconstitutional.
The Republic Act 7845 (General Appropriations Act of 1993) in Special Provision 1 art XLII
created another form of CDF, specifically providing that the:

amount herein appropriated shall be used for infrastructure, purchase of equipment and other priority
projects and activities as proposed and identified by officials concerned according to the following
allocations:
(i) Twenty million Pesos for the Vice-President (US$ 402,495.47)
(ii) Eighteen million Pesos for the Senators (US$ 362,245.92)
(iii) Twelve million Five Hundred Thousand Pesos for Congressmen (US$ 251,559.66)

This and subsequent versions of the CDF have basically been a lump sum fund in the budget intended
for projects identified by the legislators after the enactment of the appropriations law.
In response to the recurrent outrage over reports of corruption in the use of these pork barrel
funds, the executive issued regulations ostensibly intended to curb the free-wheeling project choices

18 Republic Act 6831.

19 The six-year term of President Aquino was beset by seven violent coup attempts.
20 Specifically, in Belgica vs Executive Secretary GR No 208566, the Supreme court declared the CDF legislative pork barrel
(or PDAF), as well as certain forms of presidential pork barrel, to be unconstitutional. In Araullo vs Aquino, GR No 209287,
1 July 2014, the Supreme Court also declared a presidential pork barrel fund called the Development Acceleration Program
(DAP) to be unconstitutional.

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of legislators and the Vice-President. In 1996, a media expose 21 on corruption in the CDF moved
Congress to rename it to Priority Development Assistance Fund or PDAF (for consistency, however,
the term CDF will be used instead of PDAF). This simply dressed up corruption, with many
legislators continuing to receive at least 20 per cent of projects cost from the private contractors they
selected to implement what were by then overpriced projects, as shown when the Napoles pork barrel
scam was exposed in 2013 (Fonbuena, 2013).
The PDAF, which contained essentially the same provisions as the unpopular CDF budget was
officially introduced in the General Appropriations Act of 2000 22 and detailed in the 2011 General
Appropriations law. 23 It gave much bigger annual allocations of:
(i) Seventy million Pesos (US$ 1,408,734.15) for each member of the House of Representatives;
(ii) Two-Hundred million Pesos (US$ 4.024 million) for the Vice-President and each Senator.
The former House of Representatives Speaker, Prospero Nograles, has described the two components
of the projects funded by CDF/PDAF as:
‘Soft’ and ‘Hard’ Projects All congressional districts are entitled to ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ (infrastructure) projects
in equal amounts per district to be identified by the district Representative concerned. Sectoral
constituencies have the same entitlements through their party-list Representatives. Likewise, the national
constituency of Senators has allocations to be identified by the respective Senators.
The ‘soft’ projects are identified and implemented under the PDAF following a shortlist or menu of
projects as presently provided for in the General Appropriations Act. These are basically non-infrastructure
projects like scholarship programs, medical assistance to indigent patients in government hospitals,
livelihood support programs, the purchase of IT equipment and financial assistance to local governments
(LGUs) for the latter’s priority projects and programs.
However, the PDAF can also be used to fund small infrastructure projects like roads, bridges,
footbridges, pathways, multipurpose buildings, school buildings, potable water systems, flood control,
drainage systems, irrigation facilities and electrification projects. The ‘hard’ projects cover relatively small
infrastructure projects similar to those funded under the PDAF. These projects are reflected in the General
Appropriations Act under individual district allocations and under the DPWH locally funded nationwide
lump sum appropriations.

For a long time, almost all infrastructure projects or roads had signs stating the name and picture
of the legislator whose CDF/PDAF funds funded the project. It is not surprising to find the name of
legislators still in the roof or walls of school buildings, clinics or markets they ‘funded’ many years
after they were built. The project’s turn-over ceremony always thanks the same legislator, who is
also the main speaker when the project is officially ‘given’ to the community.
The ‘soft’ projects are more personal in nature. The release of funds to an individual constituent
for hospital assistance, scholarship, and other social services require the written endorsement of the
legislator. Every week constituents line up in the District Office or residence of their legislator to ask
for their respective written endorsements, which serves as a license to access the CDF funds. There
are times when the name and picture of the legislator is even placed on the bags of rice, cartons or
cans of milk and other consumable items distributed as relief during times of calamity.
Advocates of the CDF aver that the very specific personalised transactions in the Philippine
version make it different to the ‘sinful’ American pork barrel:
… the demands for the abolition of the CDF or PDAF are uncalled for. Scrapping these allocations would
mean more indigent patients not getting free medical assistance, more students deprived of scholarships,
more rural folk denied of livelihood support, more people without potable water and electricity, more
farmers without irrigation facilities and more unemployed because of fewer infrastructure projects. Indeed,

21 In July 1996, then Representative Romeo Candazo publicly exposed the corruption inherent in the CDF system. He was
quoted as saying, ‘We all suffer while these sons of bitches make away with people’s money. My constituents are drowning
in floods while billions of funds are being wasted in useless projects or ending up in pockets of the wiser among us’ (Kris
Library, 2013).
22 Republic Act 8760.
23 Republic Act 10147.

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understanding the PDAF is appreciating its necessity and import. It is not by any measure akin to the
sinful ‘pork barrel’ of the original American mold.

It is not true, however, that scrapping the CDF system means the scrapping of these services since
the funds will merely be reallocated to the national agencies and distributed by their offices devolved
in various localities. As the People’s Initiative Against Pork (PIAP) has argued, it is the office of the
Commission on Higher Education that is familiar with, and has experience of, the selection process
in the grant of scholarships, not district congressmen or senators.
The contention, however, that the Philippine pork barrel system is not exactly the same as its
American counterpart may be true. It is worse. In fact, the CDF system needs to be proscribed as an
unlawful disbursement of public funds, for the following reasons:

(i) The system engenders corruption. The fact that the CDF system allows legislators to
select project beneficiaries who are either their voters or supporters (and in some
instances family members) is a violation 24 of anti-graft laws. The discretion exercised by
legislators over the use of CDF, compounded by its nature as a lump sum item in the
budget, feeds corruption in the CDF practice because:

a) the CDF is spent on overpriced projects or supplies, at times from companies owned by
the legislator. Worse, it is spent on non-existent projects or ‘ghost’ beneficiaries (ABS
CBN News, 2017) especially for ‘soft projects’ such as scholarships, medical assistance,
livelihood programs and other non-infrastructure projects that are difficult to audit. The
case of Janet Lim Napoles who was charged in 2013 with conspiring with legislators
and executive agencies to embezzle billions of pesos in pork barrel funds for ghost
projects best exemplifies the over-pricing of project costs. 25
b) the legislator gets kickbacks, or what is called ‘SOP’ (standard operating procedure),26
ranging from at least 19 per cent of the total project cost to as high as 50 per cent
(Bacani, 2013).
c) In many instances legislators select not just their supporters but also their family
members, allies, even their own non-governmental organisations (NGO’s) or
foundations, 27 as beneficiaries.

24 Section 3(e) of Republic Act No 3019 (the anti-graft law) sanctions a public official causing ‘any undue injury to any party,
including the Government, or giving any private party any unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference in the discharge
of his official administrative or judicial functions through manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable
negligence’.
25 Janet Lim Napoles copied names in a list of those who passed the Bar examinations (and at times, copied the names from
phone books) to report the supposed beneficiaries of the ghost projects. It is estimated that almost US$ 201.2 million was
funnelled through her network by more than a hundred legislators. As at the time of writing she remains in prison.
26 This was admitted by former Rep., Romeo Candazo, who exposed the ‘pork barrel scam’ in 1996, as quoted by the Supreme
Court in Belgica: ‘Over the decades, “pork” funds in the Philippines have increased tremendously, owing in no small part
to previous Presidents who reportedly used the “Pork Barrel” in order to gain congressional support.’ It was in 1996 when
the first controversy surrounding the ‘Pork Barrel’ erupted. Former Marikina City Representative Romeo Candazo
(Candazo), then an anonymous source, ‘blew the lid on the huge sums of government money that regularly went into the
pockets of legislators in the form of kickbacks’. He said that ‘the kickbacks were “SOP” (standard operating procedure)
among legislators and ranged from a low 19 percent to a high 52 percent of the cost of each project, which could be anything
from dredging, rip rapping, asphalting, concreting, and construction of school buildings.’ Other sources of
kickbacks that Candazo identified included public funds intended for medicines and textbooks. A few days later, the tale
of the money trail became the front-page story of the influential Philippine Daily Inquirer (13 August 1996,) accompanied
by an illustration of a roasted pig (Pablo, 1996). The publication of the stories about the congressional initiative allocations
of certain lawmakers, including ₱3.6 billion for a single Congressman, sparked public outrage.
27 The Supreme Court in Belgica, quoting from witnesses and the National Bureau of Investigation, said: ‘Recently, or in July
of the present year, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) began its probe into allegations that “the government has
been defrauded of some ₱10 billion over the past 10 years by a syndicate using funds from the pork barrel of lawmakers
and various government agencies for scores of ghost projects”.’ The investigation was spawned by sworn affidavits of six
whistle-blowers who declared that JLN Corporation – ‘JLN’ standing for Janet Lim Napoles (Napoles) – had swindled
billions of pesos from the public coffers for ‘ghost projects’ using no fewer than 20 dummy NGOs for an entire decade. While
the NGOs were supposedly the ultimate recipients of PDAF funds, the whistle-blowers declared that the money was
diverted into Napoles’ private accounts. Thus, after its investigation on the Napoles controversy, criminal complaints were
filed before the Office of the Ombudsman, charging five (5) lawmakers for Plunder, and three (3) other lawmakers for
Malversation, Direct Bribery, and Violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. Also recommended to be charged
in the complaints are some of the lawmakers’ chiefs-of-staff or representatives, the heads and other officials of three (3)
implementing agencies, and the several presidents of the NGOs set up by Napoles.’

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(ii) It engenders patronage politics or clientelism. Approximately 90 percent of the

beneficiaries of direct individualised projects (for example, scholarships, medical
assistance, or livelihood projects) admitted 28 that they are loyal to the ‘pork holder’ and
will vote for him or her in the succeeding election. Only 10 percent declared that while
they are grateful, their loyalty ends if the ‘pork holder’ commits a crime or a wrong. The
degree of gratefulness and loyalty is still overwhelming, though to a lesser extent for the
beneficiaries of collective projects (community health centres, school buildings, farm to
market roads, and other infrastructure projects).

Legislators generally claim credit for the federal or central government grants or earmarks they
brought to their districts as a means of boosting their electoral chances. While this need not
necessarily result in the re-election of the incumbent, (Bickers, 2007) it does give him or her a
substantial advantage on voters, especially in resource-strapped countries like the Philippines. As
the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (which conducted intensive research on the issue)
puts it, the CDF is:
primarily a vote getting vehicle and a source of political patronage (Chua and Cruz, 2004). The
pervasiveness of this form of patronage politics in the Philippines is best indicated by the fact that
constituents routinely measure the accomplishment of their legislators not in terms of their legislative
actions but by the number of projects the legislator manages to bring and implement in the community’

The existence of pork barrel has not only spawned traditional clientelism between the voters and the
public official distributing pork barrel, but has also engendered other forms of patronage relations.
These patronage relations, which I have categorised into four types, have further petrified the pork
barrel system in the government’s budgetary norms at a number of levels, as follows:
1) Grassroots patronage. This refers to patronage relations established by pork holder
legislators with the people and the voters who were beneficiaries of their CDF projects.
2) Local government patronage. This refers to patronage relations between the legislator
and local government officials where the CDF project is located. This network of
supportive local government officials becomes formidable electoral machinery for the
pork holder during elections.
3) Presidential patronage. This refers to the patronage relations between pork holder
legislators and the incumbent president, who controls the release of pork barrel funds
to the legislators (Ames, 1995: 339)
4) Specialised patronage. This refers to other types of patronage bred by the CDF such as
patronage contracting, which refers to the patronage relations established between the
legislators and contractors they favour to implement their projects. These contractors
contribute large amounts to support the pork holder during elections because they are
beholden to them for past lucrative projects and hope for more in the future.

The CDF system as a violation of election laws

As mentioned, the Philippine congressional pork barrel system consists of two types: the
congressional insertion (CI) and the CDF. The CDF has always been considered a patronage fund
but it has not been normally viewed as an election offense or framed within election reform discourse.
This is largely because the implementation of government projects, including those funded by the
CDF, are officially prohibited 29 during the election period, 30 which runs for a maximum of 90 days
before and after the election.
The CDF system, however, is a form of money politics because, while the abuse of state resources
happens long before the election, its impact on the voters remains pervasive, distorting election
results. While it is not impossible for electoral challengers to win, they are put at an immediate

28 Interviews conducted by the author of beneficiaries during the 15th Congress (2010-13).
29 Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Resolution 9981 (2016) and Section 261 of the Omnibus Election Code prohibits the
release of public funds and the construction of public works 45 days before the election.
30 Omnibus Election Code BP 881, Section 3 Election Campaign periods: ‘Unless otherwise fixed in special cases ... the election
period shall commence ninety days before the day of the election and shall end thirty days thereafter.’

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disadvantage by a few hundred million pesos worth of projects funded by the incumbent, unless the
challenger comes from another powerful political dynasty. Denying that the CDF is a mechanism to
subvert the voters’ will, means the electoral field will be highly unequal, thus pre-empting serious
electoral reforms.
Considering the CDF system to be a form of electoral abuse of state resources would allow
electoral reform extend beyond campaign financing violations during elections to capture abuse of
state resources before the campaign period. This paper therefore proposes reforms in the pre-election
stage such as the prohibition of the legislative pork barrel and strict interpretation of the law against
incumbent candidates found to have used state resources, from whatever source, before the campaign
period.
More specifically, the pork barrel system wrongfully distorts elections in three main ways. First,
using public funds, the CDF provides incumbent legislators with resources that will be distributed
among their constituents and voters to unduly influence the election and give them an unfair 31
electoral advantage over non-incumbent candidates: This is in breach of Section 261 paragraph (j) of
the Omnibus Election Code, which provides that:
Undue influence. - It is unlawful for any person to promise any office, or employment, public or private, or
to make or offer to make an expenditure directly or indirectly or to cause an expenditure to be made to any
person, association, corporation or entity, which may induce anyone or the public in general either to vote
or withhold his vote, to vote for or against any candidate in any election ... It is likewise unlawful for any
person, association, corporation or community, to solicit or receive, directly or indirectly, any expenditure
or promise or any office, or employment, public or private, for any of the foregoing considerations. (Sec. 59,
1971 EC)

Second, the CDF provides legislators with the unique power during elections to discretely
demand campaign donations from contractors they select for their projects. 32 These contributions
are usually not reported and cannot be regulated by campaign financing rules on donations. This
does not include the commissions (generally called SOP) demanded by ‘pork holders’ from the
winning bidders for the project.
Third, the CDF also allows legislators to conduct premature campaigning. This is not regulated
by election laws, which are designed to only regulate acts during campaign period. The ‘pork holders’
escape liability because, even if they indirectly ask the project beneficiaries to support them in the
succeeding election, they are not yet candidates nor was the act committed during the campaign
period as required by Section 79 33 of the Omnibus Code and the Supreme Court decision in Panera
v Comelec, 34 which states that ‘any unlawful act or omission applicable to a candidate shall take
effect only upon the start of the campaign period’. Only acts committed during the campaign period
are covered by election regulations.
The principle behind the Omnibus Election Code’s prohibition of certain acts during the
campaign period is that these acts will unduly influence the voters and the election. An act is
prohibited in order to suppress an evil or a violation of public policy that will result if an act is
allowed. If it is proven that these acts still unduly influence voters, even if committed before the
campaign period, they should be proscribed because it results in the same evil as if committed during
the campaign period.

31 Article XXII sec 261, Prohibited Acts, ‘The following shall be guilty of an election offense: ... (a) Vote-buying and vote-
selling. (1) Any person who gives, offers or promises money or anything of value, gives' or promises any office or
employment, franchise or grant, public or private, or makes offers to make an expenditure directly or indirectly, or cause
an expenditure to be made to any person, association, entity, or community in order to induce anyone or the public in
general to vote for or against any candidate or withhold his vote in the election …’
32 Section 95 Prohibited contribution, ‘No contribution for purposes of partisan political activity shall be made directly or
indirectly by any of the following: […] (c) Natural and juridical persons who hold contracts or sub-contracts to supply the
government or any of its divisions, subdivisions or instrumentalities, with goods or services, or to perform construction or
other works […]’.
33 Omnibus Election Code Sec. 79 Definitions. ‘As used in this Code: […] (b) ‘The term “election campaign” or “partisan
political activity” refers to an act designed to promote the election or defeat of a particular candidate or candidates to a
public office ....’
34 GR No 181613, 25 November 2009.

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These arguments are the basis for this paper’s assertion that CDF or any similar discretionary
fund must be dealt with under election regulations, not merely anti-graft laws, because it is a form
of election violation and an abuse of state resources for electoral advantage. Additionally, election
financing regulations should expand to cover the expenditure side, including those made outside the
election period campaign.
Money in politics 35 is basically the use of private funds and donations to influence policy
decisions and results of election contests, and may not necessarily be illegal. While the current
Philippine electoral reform discourse 36 calling for regulation of private election financing is
important, expenditure using state resources for electoral purposes requires equal attention because
it drains much-needed state resources and unjustly uses the people’s money to subvert their will.
Indeed, many of the author’s colleagues in Congress admitted that they need CDF projects to win
and would find it difficult to get re-elected if without them. Some legislators with unsavoury
reputation but with huge CDF allocations continue to win in elections, even after being exposed or
charged with corruption or criminal acts. In short, the electoral advantages resulting from the pork
barrel are one of the main reasons why incumbent legislators maintain their political position and,
in many instances, even manage to establish a political dynasty, with other family members winning
other elected positions.

The CDF compromises the independence and oversight function of the legislature.
As a result of presidential patronage, the CDF has been heavily used by the executive to control
the legislature by threatening to withhold its release should Congress refuse legitimate demands of
the president (example: supporting the president’s policies or bills) or even illegitimate demands (for
example, dismissing impeachment complaints against the president). 37 This is one reason why
Philippine legislators seasonally abandon their political party to transfer to the party of the president
right after every presidential election, 38 further weakening the political party system in the
Philippines. Political parties are weak, as politicians mainly depend on pork barrel or private funds,
not party support, to win elections – and for that they need the support of the president’s political
organisation. Instead of exercising genuine oversight, congressional budget deliberations therefore
focus on the availability of pork in the budget. Legislators conducting oversight of a budget that they
themselves implemented is abhorrent to their constitutional function of oversight.
The CDF practically compromises the independence of Congress, an independent and co-equal
branch of the executive, as Van Zyl correctly pointed out:
It has been argued that CDFs strengthen the role of the legislature by making them less dependent on the
executive for funding; they now have money to spend on the projects that they think are important. But
this arrangement distracts MPs from their core business and could even make them more dependent on
the executive, thus making it more difficult to oversee the work of the latter. CDFs compromise the
independence required by legislatures to oversee the executive effectively. With the executive controlling

35 International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Money in Politics, January 2015. Available at
<www.idea.int/publications/catalogue/money-politics>.
36 One of the main electoral reform debates in the Philippines focuses on the passage of numerous bills in Congress on the
Political Party Development Law, which mainly emphasises the need to strengthen political parties and regulate campaign
donation and expenditure during the campaign period. The issue of CDF is not among the electoral reforms debated.
37 The pork barrel system, both the CDF and ‘presidential pork’, were used to defeat the four impeachment complaints filed
against President Gloria Arroyo from 2005-2008. Colleagues of the author in the opposition were told by a person who
claimed to represent the president that their CDF would only be released to them if they withdrew their signature on the
impeachment complaint. They refused to do so, but others who had signed the impeachment complaint later admitted that
they had been pressured in a similar way into withdrawing their support for the impeachment. The author, who was legal
counsel for the four impeachment complaints, recorded the votes and endorsers of each complaint. Seventy-five
congressmen voted for the impeachment in 2005 but there were less than 15 votes by 2008. The author did not receive his
CDF until the end of President Arroyo’s term in 2010.
38 The Liberal Party, which had at least 116 members in the House of Representatives during the time of President Benigno
Aquino (who headed the Liberal Party), has been reduced to just 32, as most of its members transferred to the PDP Laban
Party of President Rodrigo Duterte. PDP Laban which only had 3 members after the election, has grown to 121 in barely
a year, as many legislators from various parties joined it after elections.

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large amounts of money destined for individual MPs, it is easy for the executive to pressure them into
complying with its wishes.

The CDF System Violates the Constitution

The Philippine CDF is inherently unconstitutional because of the post-enactment discretion it
provides legislators and its lump sum nature. It violates the constitutional precepts of separation of
powers, local autonomy, and the presidential power to veto budgetary items or projects. Indeed, the
Supreme Court declared the CDF, PDAF and other similar budgetary items unconstitutional for
violation of the principles of separation of powers, non-delegation of legislative powers, checks and
balance, and local autonomy in the landmark decision in Belgica vs Executive Secretary, holding that
the CDF violates: 39

a) the constitutional principle of separation of powers because implementation of the

budget is an executive, not a legislative function. Implementing projects is a usurpation
of executive powers. 40
b) the constitutional principle of non-delegation of powers because it grants individual
legislators appropriation powers to identify a project and decide its location, amount
and beneficiaries, after the approval of the appropriations law. The power of legislation
is lodged in Congress as a collective institution that cannot be delegated to individual
legislators. 41
c) the constitutional power of the President to veto the budget or an item therein because,
being an amorphous lump sum amount, it requires a post-enactment determination of
the project by the legislator. 42 The President cannot veto a budget item that was only
identified after the approval of the appropriations law.
d) the local autonomy provisions of the Constitution, because CDF projects conflicts with
the programs of the Local Development Councils (LDC) ,which sets the direction of local
economic and social development projects. Legislators who are national officials subvert
local autonomy when they duplicate or override LDC programs and projects through
pork barrel largesse.

39 The unconstitutionality of the CDF was made categorical and explicit by the Supreme Court in Belgica:
‘… the Court hereby declares as UNCONSTITUTIONAL: (a) the entire 2013 PDAF Article; (b) all legal provisions of past
and present Congressional Pork Barrel Laws, such as the previous PDAF and CDF Articles and the various Congressional
Insertions, which authorize/d legislators – whether individually or collectively organized into committees – to intervene,
assume or participate in any of the various post-enactment stages of the budget execution, such as but not limited to the
areas of project identification, modification and revision of project identification, fund release and/or fund realignment,
unrelated to the power of congressional oversight; (c) all legal provisions of past and present Congressional Pork Barrel
Laws, such as the previous PDAF and CDF Articles and the various Congressional Insertions, which confer/red personal,
lump-sum allocations to legislators from which they are able to fund specific projects which they themselves determine; (d)
all informal practices of similar import and effect, which the Court similarly deems to be acts of grave abuse of discretion
amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction; and (e) the phrases (1) "and for such other purposes as may be hereafter directed
by the President" under Section 8 of Presidential Decree No 910 and (2) "to finance the priority infrastructure development
projects" under Section 12 of Presidential Decree No 1869, …, for both failing the sufficient standard test in violation of
the principle of non-delegability of legislative power.’
40 The Supreme Court expounded on this ruling: ‘Clearly, these post-enactment measures which govern the areas of project
identification, fund release and fund realignment are not related to functions of congressional oversight and, hence, allow
legislators to intervene and/or assume duties that properly belong to the sphere of budget execution The fundamental rule,
…. cannot be overstated – from the moment the law becomes effective, any provision of law that empowers Congress or
any of its members to play any role in the implementation or enforcement of the law violates the principle of separation of
powers and is thus unconstitutional’.
41 The Court said: ‘…the Court observes that the 2013 PDAF Article, insofar as it confers post-enactment identification
authority to individual legislators, violates the principle of non-delegability since said legislators are effectively allowed to
individually exercise the power of appropriation, which … is lodged in Congress.’
42 The Court further explained that: ‘What beckons constitutional infirmity are appropriations which merely provide for a
singular lump-sum amount to be tapped as a source of funding for multiple purposes. Since such appropriation type
necessitates the further determination of both the actual amount to be expended and the actual purpose of the
appropriation which must still be chosen from the multiple purposes stated in the law, it cannot be said that the
appropriation law already indicates a “specific appropriation of money” and hence, without a proper line-item which the
President may veto. As a practical result, the President would then be faced with the predicament of either vetoing the
entire appropriation if he finds some of its purposes wasteful or undesirable, or approving the entire appropriation so as
not to hinder some of its legitimate purposes.’

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The Resiliency of the Pork Barrel System

Despite the very clear decision in Belgica and in Araullo in 2014, the CDF system is still
implemented, but now discreetly through an informal arrangement between the legislature and the
executive. Specifically, the CDF entitlement was broken down and integrated into the 2016 and 2017
budgets of various executive departments for projects on infrastructure, livelihood, scholarships
assistance and other dole outs. Legislators still retain the power to submit to the department head a
list of projects, its beneficiaries and the amount to be released by the department. Under the
arrangement, the department head is precluded from denying such ‘requests’ by legislators.
While this arrangement remains discreet, its existence was exposed in 2015 when incumbent
congressman Rep Antonio Tinio (Act Teachers Party) audio-recorded a meeting between legislators
and the Chair of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Patricia Licuanan, to discuss the
distribution of scholarship funds among legislators (Sauler, 2014). At the congressional hearing on
the CHED’s 2015 budget, Licuanan admitted that lawmakers received P14 million each from the
redeployed P4.1 billion PDAF in the form of scholarships for their chosen beneficiaries.

Conclusion
Because the CDF system and the political corruption that accompanies it are mainly rooted in local
conditions, efforts to stem this type of money politics naturally revolves around the elimination of
the local conditions that engender it. Reforms to eliminate money politics and political corruption
cannot be divorced from economic system reforms to eradicate poverty, unemployment and lack of
social services. Reforms in institutions, laws and budgetary policies to stamp out the CDF system
must also be undertaken as a component of wider efforts to address the pernicious effects of political
corruption.
The following are proposed components of electoral or legal reform that could abolish the CDF
system and any other similar legislative discretionary fund, whatever its nomenclature:

1) Prohibition of the CDF system, even its discreet informal form. This could be done
simultaneously through:
a. Statutory reform—House Bill 1535 prohibiting the pork barrel system 43 was filed in
Congress during the 16th Congress. It could be further refined and refiled, since the
CDF system survives through the discreet arrangement undertaken by legislators to
access the CDF after the Belgica decision, described above. A campaign demanding
Congress to pass the bill into law should be initiated; and
b. Regulatory reform —by treating the CDF system as a violation of election rules. The
chances that Congress will pass a bill similar to HB 1535 are admittedly quite slim.
Resort must therefore be made to the regulatory function of the Commission on
Elections by treating the use of CDF funds as a violation of rules on election
campaign financing or campaign propaganda, using the Supreme Court decision in
Belgica. A Commission on Elections resolution should be made that contains the
provisions applicable to legislators running in an election that would have the
following effect:
b.1 The disqualification of any candidate-legislator found to have submitted a list
of projects or beneficiaries to an executive department under an arrangement
that takes away the discretion of the department head to disapprove the same.
Criminal and administrative charges shall be filed against any department
head, together with the legislator, found to have acceded to the arrangement.
b.2 The disqualification of legislators:

43 The author filed House Bill 1535, which, in s 2, provides as follows: ‘Abolition of the legislative “pork barrel” funds by
prohibiting the allocation of funds for the same. For the Fiscal Year 2014 and the fiscal years thereafter, the Office of the
President is hereby prohibited from providing a budgetary item or including in the National Expenditure Program and its
accompanying books lump sum allocations to a budgetary item called “The Priority Development Assistance Fund”, or any
other budgetary item otherwise named differently but allocating for members of the House of Representatives and the
Senate, an amount for “soft programs and projects” and “infrastructure projects” to be identified by the legislators.’

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i) who are found dispensing projects (that is, distribution of scholarships or

medical assistance) with unidentified funding sources, before, during or
after the election. The disqualification will also apply to legislators who
publicly claim to be responsible for certain projects but fail to report these
as campaign donations or expenditures;
ii) who ask for, or receive, donations from contractors of government projects;
or
iii) who select a contractor of a project, or is given the discretion to select such
contractor.
While this may not stamp out the CDF altogether, it takes away a major reason for its use
as a pre-campaign patronage fund for electoral purposes.
c. Passing a law through a people’s initiative. 44 Article XVII Sec. 2 of the Philippine
Constitution provides that ‘Amendments to this Constitution may likewise be
directly proposed by the people through initiative upon a petition of at least twelve
per centum of the total number of registered voters, of which every legislative district
must be represented by at least three per centum of the registered votes therein.’
The Peoples Initiative Against Pork Barrel (PIAP), a large national coalition of
groups composed of bishops, people’s organisations, civil society groups, and
personalities such as the former Supreme Court Chief Justice and bishops of various
churches, was launched on 23 August 2014 and has so far gathered thousands of
signatures to pass a law banning the pork barrel system. Recourse can be had
through a people’s initiative to pass a law outside the formal legislative process and
beyond the repeal powers of Congress and the veto powers of the President.
iv) Strengthening campaign financing rules. There must be a cap on campaign donations
of a maximum of US$ 20,000 for every donor. There is currently no rule that puts a cap
on the amount of donations. Additionally, the Commission on Elections 45 should
encourage public campaign financing to counteract the pernicious effects of vested
interest lobbying and CDF funded campaign financing, by exempting from stringent
reporting regulation donations of less than US$ 1,000, by ordinary citizens. 46 Current
election rules impose burdensome documentary requirement for donors of less than US$
100 making it difficult for candidates to generate funds through genuine public funding.
v) Stronger prosecution mechanisms. The Philippines has a dismal track record in
prosecuting political corruption. There must be an overhaul of the justice institutions
and procedures which have been long been compromised. Specifically, the Commission
on Audit (COA) should be strengthened and given prosecutorial powers. COA orders for
disallowance of public expenditure do not strike fear among public officials as these are
mere administrative sanctions. These orders would gain more teeth if the COA, which
is currently limited to issuing notices of disallowance to government officials, is also
given the power to prosecute. The capacity of the Office of the Ombudsman, including
an increase in the number of its prosecutors, must also be strengthened.
An important step in responding to the phenomenon of money politics in the form of the CDF
system is to recognise that the CDF impinges on the free exercise of the right to suffrage. Electoral
reforms, particularly those focused on campaign financing during election period, will fall short if the
nefarious effect of CDF’s pre-election period financing and campaigning is not addressed. There must
be a realisation that the CDF is inherently anomalous and no amount of regulation can ever cure
this anomaly.

44 The people’s initiative is a direct constitutional power of the people to amend national legislation. Petitions in various
provinces have been filed with the Commission on Elections and once the required threshold is reached, the Commission
must hold a national referendum to approve or disapprove the proposed bill attached in the petitions.
45 The author attempted a crowd-sourcing type of fund raising through the internet when he ran for the Senate in the 2016
elections but abandoned the effort as Commission on Elections rules require that each donor has to submit a signed sworn
statement on the donation. President Rodrigo Duterte also publicly announced a similar ‘one peso’ campaign but also
backed out for the same reason.
46 While not discussed in this paper, the Commission on Elections may also use campaign financing rules to regulate
executive officials especially heads of agencies, who appear in advertisements put out by the agency and then run in a
subsequent election.

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Australian Journal of Asian Law Vol 18 No 2

Wulczyn, Ellery; Khabsa, Madian; Vora, Vrushank; Heston, Matthew; and Walsh, Joe (2016) ‘Identifying Earmarks in
Congressional Bills: Association for Computing Machinery’, paper presented at the 22nd ACM SIGKDD International
Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, San Franscisco, 13-17 August.
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<http://ibon.org/>.
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Budget Partnership <https://www.internationalbudget.org>.

Cases
Araullo vs Aquino, GR No 209287, 1 July 2014.
Belgica vs Executive Secretary GR No 208566, 19 November 2013.

Legislation
Republic Act 10147.
Republic Act 3019
Prohibited Acts. Article XXII sec 261.
Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Resolution 9981 (2016)
GR No 181613, 25 November 2009.
House Bill 1535 (filed by Neri Colmenares)
Omnibus Election Code BP 881
Section 95 Prohibited contributions
Republic Act 8760.

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