Without the pork barrel funds, President Aquino will most likely be a lame-duck president for the remaining three years of his administration, and we will see a truly independent Congress after all these hypocritical three years. Even the controversy alone over pork barrel and Aquino’s efforts to deal with it will have consequences that will loosen his hold on Congress.

That senators and congressmen have supported Mr. Aquino because of his openhandedness in doling out to them the euphemistically termed Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), rather than because they are adherents of his tuwid na daan pseudo-ideology is obvious in the mammoth scale of such funds released by this president: