Frédéric Bastiat on the 10 Billion Pesos Philippine Pork Barrel Scandal

The unraveling Pork Barrel Scandal in the Philippine political system resonates on the admonitions of legal plunder by the great French classical liberal economist Claude Frédéric Bastiat in “The Law”

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer: (bold mine)

It’s not only Janet Lim-Napoles and her associates who will be on trial if the pork barrel funds scam reaches the courts—she’ll be dragging along with her the Philippines’ political and justice systems, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago said on Friday.

Santiago made the remark as authorities entered the second day of a manhunt for the alleged mastermind of the P10-billion racket amid doubts that the lawmakers supposedly involved could be brought to justice

Bastiat: (bold mine)

When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it — without his consent and without compensation, and whether by force or by fraud — to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.

I say that this act is exactly what the law is supposed to suppress, always and everywhere. When the law itself commits this act that it is supposed to suppress, I say that plunder is still committed, and I add that from the point of view of society and welfare, this aggression against rights is even worse…The responsibility for this legal plunder rests with the law, the legislator, and society itself.

From Today’s Inquirer headlines:

The COA report said that between 2007 and 2009, the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) released the following amounts: about P101.6 billion for various infrastructures including local projects (VILP); P12 billion for Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) projects; and P2.36 billion for financial assistance to local government units (LGUs); and budgetary support for government-owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs).

Bastiat:

Legal plunder has two roots: One of them, as I have said before, is in human greed; the other is in false philanthropy…

Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on. All these plans as a whole — with their common aim of legal plunder — constitute socialism.

From the first Inquirer article:

Santiago also took issue with President Aquino’s decision to continue to provide for billions of pesos in the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF)—more derisively known as the pork barrel—in the proposed national budget for 2014.

“This entire scandal is the offshoot of kickbacks in pork barrel so, of course, the public began crying for the abolition of pork barrel,” Santiago said. “Yet the President refused to abolish it.  It’s the Office of the President that prepares the budget and it’s still there and he even defended it.”

Bastiat

Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Thus the beneficiaries are spared the shame, danger, and scruple which their acts would otherwise involve. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons, and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim — when he defends himself — as a criminal. In short, there is a legal plunder…

This legal plunder may be only an isolated stain among the legislative measures of the people. If so, it is best to wipe it out with a minimum of speeches and denunciations — and in spite of the uproar of the vested interests.

Not to forget that the Philippine president has a pork barrel ‘earmark’ to the tune of at least Php 2.5 billion for 2014 and used Php 2.028 billion last year (Inquirer.net). DBM 2013 Philippine budget here, President's Pork barrel in 2012 here. We will hardly know if these declarations are accurate.

And as I wrote in 2008

So essentially, the Pork Barrel culture reinforces the patron-client relations from which the Patron (politicos) delivers doleouts and subsidies, which is squeezed from the Pork Barrel projects, to the clients who deliver the votes and keeps the former in power. Hence, the Pork Barrel system is essentially a legitimized source of corruption and abuse of power seen from almost every level of the nation’s political structure, an oxymoron from its original “moralistic” intent (unintended consequences). As the saying goes “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”.

Contra mainstream media and pundits who portrays today’s scandal in the framework of personality based politics, in the context of the great French classical liberal Frédéric Bastiat, it is the perversions of the law/s that has been rooted on legalized plunder that spawns all such malfeasances. 

There can hardly ever be ‘Good governance’ or corruption free government when “the law/s” in and on itself represents the principal source of corruption.