GRPundit

"Public office is a public trust. Public officers and employees must, at all times, be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency; act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives." - Sec. 1, Art. XI, ACCOUNTABILITY OF PUBLIC OFFICERS, 1987 Constitution. Ano po ang ibig sabihin nito? Ang ibig pong sabihin nito ay ang LAHAT NG OPISYAL AT EMPLEYADO NG GOBYERNO na pinagkatiwalaan ng pondo, pera o anumang resources o asset ng bayan ay may tungkuling panagutan at i-report ang lahat ng nangyari sa mga pondo, pera, resources o asset na ipinagkatiwala natin sa kanilang pag-iingat, pati na rin ang magbigay ng malinaw na accounting sa mga ito. May tungkulin SILANG LAHAT na ipaliwanag sa atin kung paano ginamit ang mga iyon nang mabuti, walang tapon, walang sayang at walang ninakaw. Mayroon po bang exception dito? Wala po. Ang mga tungkuling ito at responsibilidad ay mandato ng ating Constitution, Walang sinumang...

Here is a elegantly simple and effective solution to the problem of "pork barrel", one which you will never hear from the likes of President BS Aquino or most of the people sitting in Congress: When a legislator has a "pet project" he or she would like to have funded - i.e., one that would be funded under the current scheme using the PDAF, a request for budget inclusion must be made to the appropriate agency. So, for example, construction of a school building is requested from DepEd, a new barangay health center is requested from the DOH, yet another covered basketball court must be approved by DPWH, and so on. If the concerned agency is sufficiently convinced of the value of the project (either on merit, or, let's be realistic, through the lobbying efforts of the Congressman or Senator involved), it is included in the agency's overall budget as a line item, one that does not specifically refer to the legislator who presented it (although, again being real...

I had one of those Coach McGuirk-like "I'm just learning this as I'm saying it" moments a little while ago after commenting on the latest column by my friend Jojo Robles at the Manila Standard Today , and I think I made a validly-debatable point: As much as the suspicion that the recent rash of bombings throughout Mindanao (five in the past two weeks) are a diversionary tactic to draw attention from the growing "pork barrel" corruption scandal is understandable, given the now almost non-existent credibility of President BS Aquino III and his Administration, it is highly unlikely that they are anything but the terrorists attacks they appear to be. As I commented earlier: ...What people are missing, I think, is the dire implications of them [the bombings] -- the "peace deal" is a sham, not accepted by a significant number of the people affected by it, and these bombings are the start of an even more unstable period in Mindanao. That's why t...

Democracy is no fun when the majority don't use their heads, and it's the season of not using heads again - well, all year every year in this country actually, but we're having elections real soon, so we're taking it up a notch and oh boy here we go again. Maybe the Philippines only exists to be an example of how to completely corrupt democracy. It takes a special kind of people to mess democracy up the way Pinoys do, like a massive unspoken collusion that works in reverse of how ants operate or behave. It's not like Pinoys have no exposure to what could be learned from the rest of the world as if we're in isolation. It's not as if Filipinos are too poorly equipped to tell good from bad. Pinoy society screw-ups are due to a potent combination of so many things cultural, it's like a melting pot of everything you could do to something that could potentially excel so that it ultimately fails. And when that something fails excuses abound and everyone goes...

From a Facebook page:  " The Catholic Church in its rally yesterday claimed that contraception leads to corruption. I tried to see a statistical basis for this assertion and gathered a few random countries' contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR, in percent) and corruption perception (rankings). It turns out that the Philippines, with the lowest CPR is the most corrupt, and countries with high CPRs (the U.S., Turkey, South Korea, Australia) were the least corrupt. What this means to me is that contraception is associated with the dissipation of corruption, contrary to what the Catholic clergy says." I disagree with the statement that contraception and corruption are inversely correlated, i.e., more contraception leads to less corruption.  At the very least, though, it shows that a correlation, much less causality, between contraception and corruption has not been established.   So much for that moronic argument of the Catholic Church.   They've got nothi...

Below is a classic response to an equally classic type of commentary that emanates from the very core of dysfunctional thinking that infests Pinoy society. My response is classic benign0 and classic Get Real Philippines harking back to our original core message -- that Filipinos are, at the end of the day, a people who are culturally-disadvantaged in the context of their aspirations to succeed in a world defined by Western and Confucian standards of success. * * * @ MindVSHeart re what you said here : I’ll tell you how to lessen corruption. First, oust the corrupt. So they may understand that when they steal money, they go to jail. This will discipline them. Second, make a system that will make it more difficult for them to steal. I don't think so. That is the simplistic tagline that's been repeated ad infinitum across more campaign rhetoric than can be counted. People pitch the notion of rooting out corruption by "ousting the corrupt" because it is an easy concep...