Well, this is from the people’s point of view. But he did it out of his own point of view – to be free of persistent influence. The pressure of party members which cannot be seen by the general population can be difficult for a decision-maker.

He wasn’t trying to be absolutely free from influence. That’s impossible. But he was trying to lessen the influences on him especially the influencing power of partisan party members (I just heard the news that he was going for an anti-rich campaign. Hello Danding.).

If you had a friend running for a position, even if you don’t support his platform/candidacy, there is still an amount of pressure (even if not intentional). Even if you could free yourself from this pressure, the presence of it still disturbs you since you would still be seeing each other and be as friends.

Well, they should have. I am interested to find out about the results too.

BTW, he filed for impeachment in 2005 which was when funds was refused from Sorsogon. Interesting that the DBM website did not mention this as Chiz said in an interview.

@Parallax

Well yeah. It is suspicious that he didn’t raise hell for it.

it’s easier to raise funds from dirty money without a party…but will it be enough? Maybe Chiz’ fraternity brothers will sell their houses and cars for them

it’s like, if you’re sole witness to a terrible crime but stayed silent until investigations finally led to you, you become a suspect unless you are cleared after you were investigated too. that should apply to chiz as well if he insists on not receiving his pork.

its becoming clear to me that cheez’s argument is really an argument vs parties in general — even if he himself doesnt spell it out clearly.

but there is an obvious problem with his logic. not having a party does NOT mean you are free from ‘influence’; only that your influences are particualry opaque.

this is one of the purposes of parties — so that influences are publicly observable. we should know what we are getting if we are voting someone from party X (for example)

Chiz wasn’t denied his funds. According to a report from The Philippine Star, contrary to Chiz’s pronouncements he did receive pork barrel funds amounting to more than Php 120 million since 2004.

http://www.asianjournal.com/pdf/PDF/2009_OC/2009_08_21/2009_08_21_OC_A%2010.pdf

He can deny it all he likes, but he really should be audited.

He was already pushing for impeachment wasn’t he? doesn’t that count?

i was just thinking… if it’s true that the administration did cut chiz’s funds for his projects para sa sorsogon, then why didn’t he make a ruckus out of it when that happened? why don’t his constituents back him up and say “marami pong planong proyekto para sa sorsogon si senador chiz pero hindi lang talaga niya nagawa dahil tinanggalan siya ng pondo ni gloria. sa kanya pa rin po ang suporta namin”?

shouldn’t he have raised hell for that immediately instead of sitting on it?

there’s no such thing as loyalty for the likes of chiz. i agree with rom nung sinabi (i.e. graphic on her blog post) nyang emo si chiz.

Mas parang rakista nga eh! Ala bamboo! hehe

When Chiz supported ousting Gloria, he was refused funding for Sorsogon thus he was left on his own.