By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 6: Is it worth saving an incompetent and corrupt President?

It is not Bongbong Marcos but Sara Duterte who blew the whistle on the budget corruption.

On September 10, 2024, the Vice President accused House Speaker Martin Romualdez and the chairperson of the powerful House appropriations committee of manipulating the Department of Education’s budget for classroom construction over the past two years.

Duterte said the House of Representatives inflated DepEd’s budget for classroom construction beyond its requested sum in 2023 and 2024. This, she claimed, allowed Romualdez and Rep. Elizaldy Co (Ako Bicol) to control billions in additional funds.  

On the same day the lower chamber resumed its deliberations on the OVP’s proposed 2025 budget, the OVP sent Duterte’s video to reporters. In the nine-minute video which was a continuation of another video the OVP sent earlier— Duterte detailed her concerns about the alleged irregular insertions in the budget of DepEd, which she said, led to her resignation on July 19 or three days before the President’s 2024 state of the nation address.

It was in the 2024 SONA that Marcos Jr had a slip of the tongue claiming 5,500 flood control projects nationwide as a flagship achievement – that turned out to be a boo-boo.

Duterte recalled being approached by House members who asked for a portion of DepEd’s proposed P5 billion outlay for classroom construction in the 2023 budget.

“I was taken aback when they asked, ‘How much of that is ours? How much do we get?’” the vice president said in Taglish.

She refused outright the lawmakers’ requests to give DepEd a free hand to construct new classrooms based on its backlog. “So, sinabihan ko ‘yung isang congressman, ‘sabihan ninyo si Martin Romualdez na hindi pwedeng chop-chopin ang classroom construction na 5 billion’ (I instructed one congressman, ‘Tell Martin Romualdez that we cannot allow the P5 billion for classroom construction to be chopped into piecemeals),” the vice president added

Because she did not agree to the lawmakers’ demands, Duterte alleged that DepEd’s proposed P5 billion funds for classrooms were bumped up to P15 billion, with the additional P10 billion being placed under the “control” of Romualdez and Co.

The vice president said House leaders did the same in the 2024 budget, where an initial P19 billion allocation for classroom construction was raised to P24 billion. This time, the additional P5 billion was allegedly taken from the funds allocated for classroom repairs.

“So, what was left for repairs for the poor classrooms is just 1 billion,” Duterte said. 

For the 2024 budget, she said House leaders attached a list specifying where the P17 billion for classroom construction would go even though the department did not approve this. “You can see that on paper. When we went to the Senate, the senators saw this. They asked the Department of Education, ‘Is it true or not that the list of 17 billion for classroom construction came from you?’ “at is one of the reasons why I resigned from the Department of Education. I will not allow them to do the same thing next year and hold me accountable for their actions,” Duterte said.

Karma hits the Philippines

Three days after the President’s 2024 SONA, much of the Philippine capital remained underwater after deadly Typhoon Carina (Gaemi) packed sustained winds at 230 km/h (145mph) classified as a Category 4-equivalent typhoon according to the Saffir-Simpson wind scale, and worsened torrential monsoon rains that lashed the country, trapping thousands of people in rising flood waters and causing widespread damage,

The monsoon enhanced by Carina’s impact on Luzon led to comparisons to 2009’s Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana).

Continuous heavy rains, massive flooding and landslides across the Philippines killed at least 13 people and displaced more than 600,000, and an oil tanker capsized off the country’s coast during strong winds and high waves, Philippine authorities said Thursday.

Carina didn’t make landfall in the Philippines, but its powerful outer bands dumped more than 300 mm (12 inches) of rain in the Manila region and parts of the main island Luzon, prompting officials to declare a “state of calamity” in the capital and evacuate tens of thousands of people.

Video and images from Manila show people wading through chest-deep water and some clinging precariously to overhead power lines as major roads turned into rivers. Families with children wrapped in towels or plastic ponchos huddled together on dinghies as disaster response teams rescued them from flooded houses.

Some parts of Metro Manila – home to 13 million people – have reported floods as high as one-story buildings, with some residents spotted waiting for rescue on roofs, according to the official Philippine News Agency.

On top of usual the monsoon during the rainy season, the Philippines was hit by six consecutive tropical cyclones between late October and mid-November 2024, three of which were super typhoons with wind speed exceeding 185 km/h.

First to make landfall in Luzon on October24, severe tropical storm Kristine (international name: Trami) triggered widespread flooding and landslides in 17 regions, with Bicol being one of the most affected. Heavy floods, landslides, and storm surges brought by these successive cyclones caused extensive damage in Luzon provinces heavily impacted by Kristine, including Albay, Aurora, Cagayan, Camarines Sur, and Catanduanes.

Cumulatively, more than 15 million people were affected, and over 600,000 were displaced.

This was followed shortly by super typhoon Leon (Kong-Rey), typhoons Marce (Yinxing) and Nika (Toraji), and sper typhoons Ofel (Usagi) and Pepito (Man-Yi).

Aside Sara Duterte’s whistleblowing, it was Mother Nature who exposed that President Marcos’ 5,500 flood control projects was a myth, a pir-in-the sky, a monumental fraud.

Slowly it started to unravel that in 2003 and 2004, the President authorized hundreds of billion in public works insertions into the national budget intended for flood control that were starting to be exposed as either ghost or substandard projects.

The debate for the 2005 budget got messy. Congressman Isidro Ungab divulged that when the members of the bicameral committee signed the endorsement of the General Appropriations Bill to the President, it contained blank provisions, which was highly irregular.

(Congressman Toby Tiangco, a relative of the president exposed that Speaker Martin Romualdez had created a “small committee” that filled in the blanks, after bicameral formal action, and finalized the GAB for the president’s signature. According to him, this was gross violation of the Senate and House rules as no more amendments, alterations or changes can be allowed after formal bicameral action, except perhaps for typographical errors.)

Petitions were filed with the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of 2025 budgeting process due to allegations of “blank items” in the final report and the violation of due budgeting process.

Despite this, President Marcos signed the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) into law on December 30, 2024. The administration maintained that the budget was legal and the “blank items” were for final computations, while opponents filed cases claiming the process was irregular and unconstitutional.

Marcos only vetoed 29 out of 250 yellow-flagged insertions that stunk as pork barrel intended to raise campaign funds for the administration candidates for the 2025 May midterm elections. Many more anomalous provisions, not related to flood control surfaced later, but all told – the flood control scandal now grew to P1.2 trillion, with the 2025 insertions added to questionable approp[riations for 2023 and 2024.

The public uproar was so deafening, the President attempted to cover up the mess.

In his 2025 State of the Nation Address, President Marcos feigned picturing himself as the “graftbuster” focused on flood control by addressing corruption, ordering an audit, and launching a public database of projects.

“Mahiya naman kayo” he threw at Congress, criticizing the failure of many flood control projects, called out those involved in substandard work, and ordered the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to submit and publish a list of all projects from the past three years to be verified for failures, unfinished work, or ghost projects. Albeit vague, heal so announced plans for future large-scale projects and acknowledged that poor waste management worsens flooding.

Marcos started lulling the public by making field inspections left and right, but leaving no substantial progress at getting into bottom of things, except trying to avoid blame for the monumental plunder.

The first measure he adopted was tasking DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan to investigate his own department. Of course this did not work for the simple reason that he asked the one of the more probable guilty persons to investigate himself. So, Marcos imported Vince Dizon from the Department of Transportation to replace Bonoan.

Speaker Romualdez also messed up by rushing to create an Infrastructure Committee (Infracom) to start investigations on contractors without implicating congressmen, trying to divert blame to contractors, DPWH officials and senators instead.

But what was remarkable was the investigations of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that traced the money trail from contractors to DPWH officials and eventually to the residences of Zaldy Co in the Bonifacio Global City, Martin Romualdez at MacKinley Road in Forbes Park, and to another Romualdez mansion at Aguado street, that is right across Malacanang Palace in J. P Laurel street in San Migue, Manila, which allegedly has a connecting underground tunnel to the Malacang Guest House.

Zaldy Co’s laptops

Of late, Vice President Sara Duterte challenged newly-appointed Boying Remulla that if he is serious about investigating, he should pursue the prosecution of Ako Bicol Partylist Zaldy Co’s laptop corruption scandal ng Department of Education which was red-flagged during her father’s administration.

Duterte said she allowed the use of confidential funds were used to probe the overpriced laptop procurement. She alleged that Co’s firm was involved in the anomaly because Sunwest was the contractor of the laptop there at DepEd.) 

“There were many reports of corruption inside the Department of Education, not just in the central office but also the regional offices,” she told reporters in the Pandesal Forum at Kamuning Bakery.

She added in the vernacular: (I know that because we conducted our own investigation within the Department of Education when I was the Secretary of Education. May I just say that there were confidential funds allocated for the investigation.)

But according to Duterte, their investigation found that the procurement of the overpriced laptops “did not happen” inside the DepEd, but within the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM).

In August 2023, then Ombudsman Samuel Martires ordered the suspension for six months without pay of several current and former officials of DepEd and PS-DBM for their role in the transaction. Briones was admonished, although she was not held liable.

Martires also ordered the filing of graft and falsification charges against former Budget Undersecretary Christopher Lao, and several former DepEd and DBM officials, over the P2.4 billion worth of laptops purchased, which were deemed “pricey” by the Commission on Audit.

There you go. A real investigation that followed the rule of law, properly brought before Ombudsman and the proper courts.

No whitewash. No cover-up. And after the Secretary of Education did all she could in reforming a department to the best of her ability delivering the historic “Matatag” curriculum in a record two-years despite the constraints of the system, she selflessly resigned to allow any successor to better her achievement.

In the 2003 budget hearings, “If the DepEd is given the budget that it is requesting, we will be able to open more programs to address the learning problems of our students. So initially po, lumapit na kami sa Pangulo at sinabihan ko po ang Pangulo na if you give me (an additional) P100 billion, I will solve all the problems of basic education,” Duterte said.

From that year to 2005, a minimum of P1.2 trillion was wasted by the government to bloat the Department of Public Works and Highways to unprecedented heights , most of which merely fattened the private pockets of contractors, congressmen, senators and high officials of the executive department, in violation of the law that provides for the highest budget allocation must favor the Department of Education.

As we speak, 80% of the people are now angry, in righteous indignation, about this monumental plunder that has bankrupted the national treasury and has put in clear and present danger the survival of the State.#

To be continued

   

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