"You have the manners of a human being."
"You have the manners of a human being."
One of my all-time cartoon favorites involves pigs: In the cartoon, two pigs are at a trough, eating the usual swill. Then one of the pigs turns to the other and says: “You have the manners of a human being.” I was reminded of that cartoon -—it appeared in New Yorker magazine, if I am not mistaken—because of the confluence of two events.
One event was the start of the Chinese New Year. According to the Chinese lunar calendar, February 5 was the start of the new year, which this year is the Year of the Pig. In a gesture of recognition of the role played by the Chinese-Filipino community in the life and development of this country, Malacañang several years ago declared the first day of the Chinese New Year as a non-working national holiday.
The other event was the finalization of the national budget, more formally known as the General Appropriations Act (GAA) for 2019. Notwithstanding the fierce denials of the Secretary of Budget and Management (DBM), every year is pork barrel year for the GAA drafters of the House of Representatives—under the Constitution all money bills must emanate from the Lower House—and 2018 was a particularly profitable time for the Representatives involved in the drafting of the 2019 GAA.
Nostrils far from the Batasan Hills could pick up the smell of pork. The years in which the disgraced Janet Lim-Napoles was actively chasing PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund) allotments were bad years for the anti-pork barrel folk, for 2018 was a particularly bad time for them. The 2018 GAA con artists made the Lim-generated PDAF payouts seem almost like loose change. The irregular P2.4 billion and P1.5 billion Congressional district allocations claimed by DBM chief Dr. Benjamin Diokno and the P75 billion Diokno insertions claimed by Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. can only be described as breathtaking and awesome.
The Chinese Lunar New Year calendar is a permanent system and the designation of 2019 as the Year of the Pig was done long ago. It is the greatest of coincidences that the Year of the Pig came into being at a time when Congressional pork barrel activity reached unprecedented heights.
Fervid explanations have been offered for the alleged outsize district allocations and post-approval insertions. The explanations sound unbelievable, for they could be valid. In any event, as the saying goes, where there's smoke, there's fire.
The accusations and counter-accusations exchanged between Benjamin Diokno and the appropriations/ finance committee heads of the House of Representatives and the Senate have already received much media coverage, in the process making Congress appear like a den of con artists. How unfortunate it is, though, that the legislative slugfest should have taken place on the eve of the Year of the Pig's onset. Porcine activity has been highlighted.
This brings me back to the cartoon of which I spoke at the start of this column. The stern pig in the cartoon may well have rebuked his fellow pig with a “You have the manners of the leaders of the Philippine Congress.”
I guess that when they greeted one another on February 5, the legislators involved in the making if the 2019 GAA emphasized the word “fat” in the greeting “Kung Hei Fat Choi.”