Manila: Catholic Church leaders in the Philippines said they fully support the people’s initiative to abolish the “pork barrel” system used to fund congressional projects using the public’s money.

Pork barrel is a term used to describe funds available to members of the Philippine House of Representatives and the Philippine Senate.

In a statement, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, said: “All measures our citizens take, provided these are moral, peaceful and lawful, aimed at curbing corruption and the irresponsible use of public funds have our full support.”

Villegas issued the statement amid moves by allies of the Aquino administration in Congress to redefine the Supreme Court’s interpretation of controversial congressional discretionary funds such as the Disbursement Acceleration Programme (DAP).

DAP funds are savings incurred from government projects. An examination by the Supreme Court said DAP funds were diverted to other endeavours.

The Supreme Court said that such fund tampering in the national budget is illegal because such expenditures have already been approved by Congress under the General Appropriations Act.

A similar source of controversy is the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), which are funds allocated to Senators and Congressmen to be spent on projects that are supposed to benefit their constituents.

However, instead of aiding constituents, certain lawmakers, in cahoots with private individuals, were able to divert these public funds to line their pockets.

Villegas said such corrupt practices must be done away with so that people could benefit from whatever economic progress the country is able to achieve.

“We have been informed of attempts to perpetuate the system through the appropriation of lump sums in the national budget under various pretexts,” said Villegas.

Earlier, the Commission on Audit said that funds allocated for development projects allocated to certain senators and congressmen under the PDAF, had not gone to their declared beneficiaries, which are the congressional constituents.

The same goes for the DAP where budget allocated for certain projects were diverted to other endeavours.

Such acts violates the peoples trust.

“We therefore fully endorse the people’s initiative aimed at legislating the proscription of funds made available to officials and subject to their discretion alone,” Villegas said.

Likewise, the Villegas and the CBCP criticised the practice of certain officials of avoiding audits and accountability by classifying certain allocations as “intelligence funds”.

“You cannot serve both God and money. We choose to serve God and we cannot countenance the idolisation of money, especially when it takes the form of unfettered access to the money of the people,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Cebu-based anti-pork coalition is optimistic that it would be able to gather enough signatures for a “people’s initiative” to pass legislation and totally outlaw the pork barrel system.

According to Father Romulo Kintanar of the Cebu Coalition Against the Pork Barrel System they are trying to get 5.4 million signatures or 10 per cent of the total voting population to abolish the corruption-prone system.

The signature drive would be launched on August 23 in Cebu City.