BUB: The hidden trump

Both politicians we spoke to were confident that matters would start changing right after the Holy Week. They were certain that the constantly leading contenders for the presidential derby this May would start falling far behind, eating dust as it were, and magically, fueled by a high-octane chemistry of continuous mudslinging, money and machinery, the Liberal Party (LP) bet, long since a loser from the start and consistently scraping the bottom of surveys, would ride the wind and completely overtake everyone else. 

Whether those were prospects or fears, the forecasts made sense after a few other questions propounded on the other candidates.

For Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares, who leads the pack together with Vice President Jejomar Binay, we asked if the reason might be the continuing ambiguity on her citizenship status, despite a ruling by the Supreme Court.

For Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, we asked: Might the reason be the disqualification cases arrayed against his candidacy?

And for the front-running Vice President, might the never-ending multimillion-peso demolition jobs reach a new low, turn utterly, if not ridiculously vicious, and resurrect old and crusted issues?

Accumulate all these and array against Benigno Aquino III’s chosen’s chances, might the reason be that the constant bottom-feeder suddenly and, perhaps, miraculously develops from total nothingness genuine empathy for the downtrodden; or from middle-aged gonads, testicles enough to challenge criminality the way Duterte does; or from a track record of failures, sudden competence in degrees that would rival Vice President Binay’s record of administrative, social and economic successes?

Their reply was cryptic. It was all these, but likewise, not just these. What, indeed, was the LP’s trump card?

For the local government politicians we debated with around a blogger’s intimate roundtable encounter, the unanimous rationale for the LP bet’s prospective sudden surge would be the eventual churning of the local government machinery timed to coincide with the start of the local government campaign.

It was all about the party machinery. And money. Note their argumentative premises.

From Poe to Duterte and Binay, none, save Aquino’s, had a direct channel to the local militia, whether these were from the Armed Forces of the Philippines or from the police under the Department of the Interior and Local Governments (DILG).

The local militia was in their pocket. The effect on the voters and on the ballot needed no further explanation. It was part and parcel of the machinery’s advantage.

Allow us to delve deeper into what fuels and runs that machine. For local politicians, only the former secretary of the DILG promised to perpetuate “Bottom-Up Budgeting” (BUB).

The BUB conveniently founds the electoral machinery to catapult the LP bet to the presidency. As a doggy biscuit dangled in front of salivating local government officials like the billion-peso doles of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) it feeds a cacique-style culture of, first, inducement, followed by mendicancy and dependence.

The BUB is simply another factor, albeit with a heavily weighted coefficient, within the vote-buying formula. Include in this the distribution of agricultural funds by the wife of one of the candidates.

In tandem with the hidden lump sums in the General Appropriations Act, and Aquino’s signature Disbursement Acceleration Program, the BUB perpetuates party power by distorting revenue protocols statutorily established.

Formerly, the Local Government Code (LGC) established impartial criteria to govern Internal Revenue Allotments (IRA) to local government units (LGUs). These were based on a definitive non-political spectrum of metrics that included economic capacity, population and productivity. Funding inadequacies are filled in by LGU empowerment where LGUs create revenue sources, such as bonds issuance or partnerships with private businesses.

The BUB does away with that and, instead, replaces the criteria with parochial political partisanship and patronage, as Palace-favored LGUs readily drain from state coffers while the unconnected resort to begging.