Supposedly a constitutional guaranty for the people to enact a law for their own welfare and protection, the so-called People’s Initiative is a long and winding road. And yet, tedious and difficult as it is, the people have no better option than this if they are determined to eliminate this long-thriving pest called Pork Barrel.

Indeed, the people have to resort to this arduous task as a raw if elemental democratic expression, for the simple reason that their elected representatives who are supposed to take the appropriate move have sadly failed them. Once more, this   demonstrates the deplorable fact of elitism in our system of governance. Demo-cracy, as the ruling elite calls it, is ill at work. But wait.

But wait. Do we still consider ours a democracy?  Is it enough that during elections we are made to choose senators and congressmen who do not represent the great majority but the very few who constitute the ruling elite in our society? Is it enough that we have a legislature called Congress that makes laws for the benefit only of the few who own and control our economy? Is it enough that we can shout to the top of our voice under the sun and rain in indignation rallies because our demands for a better future are ignored? Is it enough that we go to the streets as “parliamentarians” because we have been robbed of our right to a life of dignity, the right to an equitable distribution of economic wealth and resources, the right to freedom from poverty ?

No. We are not a democracy if the concentration of the wealth and resources of our country is in the hands of a few. We are not a democracy if we have the freedom to speak and be jailed for pinpointing and attacking the very core issues of ill-governance. We are not a democracy if our aspirations for the higher republics of human existence are denied us — us, the teeming majority of the population.

Well, we can at most call this an “elite democracy”. And rightly so, because only the elite enjoy the luxury of Nature’s gifts and bestowals to our lands. leaving the great great many in dire want.. Ye3s, this democracy only to them—them who want this pernicious Pork Barrel system to remain as a reservoir of “bribe funds” to mobilize the senators and congressmen to prop up their politico-economic ends and measures.

And so, we, the people, have to resort to this political exercise called People’s Initiative, because we can never rely on our pseudo-representatives in Congress to respond to our demands for a better life, much less for a clean and honest governance. \We can never lodge our faith and hope in a host of hypocrites in the corridors of power who rob us of our much much needed. daily bread. We have to enact the laws we want for our own benefit and welfare ourselves.

The ruling classes should not call this a rationale or justification for a modus vivendi under a democratic system, whereby the constituency are left to their own devices or left to perish under a vicious cycle of existence where there is freedom to die of hunger and want. This is equivalent to an act of desperation of an ignored and deprived citizenry –an act guaranteed in a system of tokenism designed to glorify it own hyopocrisy.

We are aware that this current Peopl;e’s Initiative to Abolish All Pork will tremendous difficulties on the way, because the supposed people’s representatives themselves are putting up roadblocks to frustrate its realization.   Where can you find people’s elective officials making demoralizing remarks purportedly to discourage and obstruct people’s participation in so fundamental a democratic function.

It’s an arduous trek to the realization of a people’s dream. It is on its way,. and nothing can stop it, no matter the countermoves by the Aquino administration,. The People’s Initiative will gather momentum. It will reach its desired end.