Everybody is now talking about the incident which rocked Zamboanga City into a full blown military action. The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) faction loyal to Nur Misuari went to the city of flowers last Monday morning, held some hostages, barricaded the city hall and hoisted the MNLF flag there. At least four barangays became the site of the military encounters. The AFP has deployed a lot of soldiers. The media has covered the incident last Monday and the rest of the week. Apparently, Zamboanga City has become the news headline and the pork barrel scam simply took the second fiddle including that very lonely mass action last Wednesday at the EDSA shrine. Did we sound prophetic when we declared that the anti-pork barrel will just die in a natural death? From the very start of the pork barrel issue, we already predicted that a spin will come soon. And last Monday, there came a spin.

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What is a spin? In public relations, a spin refers to a disingenuous, deceptive and highly manipulative tactics in order to subvert the attention given to an issue. For example, politicians are often accused by their opponents of claiming to be honest and seek the truth while using spin tactics to manipulate public opinion. In this case, the Misuari maneuver to bring chaos in Zamboanga City is a spin so that the attention given to the pork barrel scam will die down. In the first place, Misuari has been a known spinner. In 1972, when Marcos was about to declare martial law, Misuari, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, went to Marawi City and raided the armory at the Mindanao State University and proclaimed independence of the Bangsa Moro Army (BMA). Marcos then cited this as one of the reasons to declare martial law adding the parliament of the streets in Manila. That was quiet a spin.

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We could not help but laugh at the news last Thursday night when it was reported that an infantry surrounded a barangay in Zamboanga City. According to the report, the AFP believed that some MILF rebels were present in the area and they wanted to block it as an escape route. Later in the afternoon, a car zoomed in the street. The military halted the vehicle. It was driven by a teacher together with her daughter and a kid. They went out of the house to buy some food. There was no MILF present in the area, they said. Was that a false intelligence or just a deployment just to catch more media attention. The Zamboanga City incident will continue to hold the headlines for the next two weeks until such time that people can detect that it was just a spin. Oh, we see DILG Sec. Mar Roxas talking the lead in that incident. It sounds beneficial to his political plans in 2016. Napoles had her eyes tight on the Zamboanga City incident. Never mind if the whistleblowers will file their case against her tomorrow. Expect more spins to come in the next few days.

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That being the case, we shall proceed with our promise two weeks ago to delve on the local pork barrels. We start with the intelligence fund. Local chief executives like the governors and mayors have their intelligence fund in the general budget of their local government unit every year. According to DILG, the minimum allowable ceiling to use funds for intelligence or confidential purposes shall not exceed thirty percent (30%) of the total annual amount allocated for peace and order efforts or, three percent (3%) of the total annual budget, whichever is lower. The use of intelligence funds shall not be limited to purchase of information, payment of rewards, rental and other incidental expenses relative to the maintenance of safe houses and payment of incentives or traveling expenses relative to the conduct of intelligence or confidential operations. In other words, these should go primarily to local police for the maintenance of peace and order.

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Unfortunately, the area which makes the intelligence fund as similarly situated to a pork barrel is its liquidation. Government accounting and auditing mandates that the liquidation of intelligence fund expenditures must be placed inside a sealed envelope and sent directly to the chairman of the Commission on Audit. The receipt of such sealed envelope will already be the liquidation. What is inside the sealed envelope can never be revealed because it is confidential in nature. We used to call this liquidation as between you, your God and the COA Chairman.

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We only heard of one case wherein the local chief executive mishandled the intelligence fund. The Sandiganbayan convicted last May former Dipolog City Mayor Joseph Cedrick Ruiz for graft and malversation for pocketing P950,000 of the city's confidential intelligence fund (CIF) shortly before his term as Dapitan mayor ended in 2001. Ruiz is now a judge in the Regional Trial Court in Makati City. Ruiz lost his mayoral bid to Rodolfo Carreon, the husband of Romeo Jalosjos's sister Cecilia in the 2001 elections. Two days after Rodolfo Carreon was proclaimed the winner, Ruiz supposedly asked Dapitan Police Chief SPO4 Pepe Nortal to come up with a peace and order campaign that would have a budget of P1 million. Ruiz cannot make a cash advance as he has not liquidated his previous cash releases. Nortal eventually got the cash advance and then supposedly handed to Ruiz P1 million in four bundles of P250,000 each. Ruiz supposedly gave Nortal P50,000. The Sandiganbayan said that the timing of the cash advance was suspect. Ruiz said he will contest the decision up to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Nortal passed away last year.

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Postscript: There was a want for editing in this corner last Sunday and we could not put the blame on our preparations for the Lindaville fiesta. We accept the errors, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. But those editing problems cannot overthrow the idea that we would want to drive at here. These were not falsus in onus, falsus in omnibus. To all our readers, some are avid, some may not, because we may belong to their opposite fence no matter what those fences are, just keep on reading in order to arrive at the truth, because the truth shall set you free. There are still more when we return.