Online petition for pork barrel scam investigation initiated by former gov’t officials

The group Former Senior Government Officials (FSGO) initiated an online petition on petition platform site Change.org calling for the “Office of the Ombudsman to conduct an impartial investigation of the grave misuse of the” Priority Development Assistant Fund (PDAF) of legislators who were named by the Commission on Audit (COA) in its special audit report.

According to the COA report, 28 lawmakers allegedly allocated their PDAF or pork barrel funds to support bogus organizations over the past decade.

The said mastermind in this pork barrel scam is businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles.

Various socio-civic groups and thousands (if not millions) of individuals call for the in depth investigation of the lawmakers involved in the said scam. Even Malacanang has pushed the authorities to conduct an “exhaustive investigation” of the matter.

One of the groups who are pushing for the PDAF investigation is the FSGO, a group of former government officials “who operate as a network… with a common interest in longer-term reforms for good governance,” according to their profile in Change.org.

Some of the FSGOs responsible for the online petition are Isagani Cruz (former undersecretary of education), Edilberto de Jesus (former secretary of education), Fulgencio Factoran Jr.

(former secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources), Vicente Paterno (former senator and minister of the Department of Trade and Industry), and Jesus Estanislao (former secretary of finance).

As of posting, the petition has gathered 15, 525 signatures and is in need of 9,475 more.

With report from Ron Lopez