By Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan

 

Part 8: Is it worth saving a weak, incompetent and corrupt President?

At long last, person who has been missing in all executive and legislative investigations involving multimillion-peso flood control kickbacks, broke his silence.

In a five-minute video he uploaded on Facebook, former House Appropriations Committee Chairperson Rizaldy “Zaldy” Co blew the whistle on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, and his cousin former Speaker Martin Romualdez, alleging that Marcos instructed him through Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, to insert P100 billion worth of infrastructure projects during the Bicameral Conference of 2024.

(His lawyer, Ruy Rondain, confirmed the authenticity of the video but refused to discuss it further.)

The instructions were confirmed to him by Usec Adrian Bersamin of Office of the Executive Secretary who gave him the list of projects worth P100 billion contained in a “brown letter bag” in a meeting at a building at Aguado street opposite Gate 4 of Malacanang, where Pangandaman and Justice Usec Jose Cadiz III were also present.

“I called former speaker Martin Romualdez, and I reported the instructions of the President to insert the P100 billion projects, and he told me that what the President wants, he gets,” Co narrated.

Shortly thereafter, he informed Romualdez, Pangandaman, Bersamin and Cadiz that only P50 billion could be inserted in the programmed funds for the Department of Public Works and Highways because a bigger insertion could be flagged since it would exceed the proposed budget of the Department of Education.

Co said, it was agreed that the balance of P50 billion be inserted instead as unprogrammed funds, “as the Office of the President is the one releasing all unprogrammed funds.”

Pangandaman even reiterated to him a day after that he must include the P50 billion, since it had already been promised to Romualdez. “Kumbaga, ang utos ng hari hindi pwedeng mabali.” (The order of the king cannot be broken).

What Co added pinned down the president and his budget secretary – “I was surprised when I heard the president say that he did not understand the budget, since all of the insertions and the deletions were done by Pangandaman with his approval.”

Shallow denials

Secretary Pangandaman has denied Co’s allegations. But despite the fact her response was evasive, it has become the official line of Malacanang.

“We reject any insinuations about it,” she explained “all appropriations that had been ordered by Mr. Marcos were already in the National Expenditure Program (NEP), which had been presented to Congress months earlier. The Bicam is purely under the power of the legislature. We respect and strictly follow the budget process and all our actions are aboveboard.”

Prewsidential Communications Secretyary issued a rejoinder “These wild accusations -are completely without basis in fact. All the charges leveled against the President are pure hearsay,” said.

“Let us not forget, President Marcos Jr. himself exposed all these flood control anomalies and has taken numerous steps since to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice, the stolen wealth recovered and the system is fixed to avoid any of this from happening again,” Gomez said.

Malacañang press officer Claire Castro, as usual, waxed personal and full of venom, “To save himself from allegations of stealing from the nation’s coffers and to show that he is the victim, he has woven fallacious stories against other people, pointing to other people except himself in spite of the fact that his and his family’s wealth is screaming evidence against him.”

Bicam yarn

First, the budget secretary cannot extricate herself from the role of the president in the budgeting process. Her function is not just to consolidate the submissions of the different agencies of the government but to enforce policies and standards for sound financial management, including internal controls on expenditures and a system for monitoring performance.

Second, there is a process that is being followed that starts from the executive branch’s “national expenditure program” (NEP) that is submitted to the legislative branch to become the general appropriations bill (GAB).

Article VI, Section 25 (2) of the Philippine Constitution allows Congress to “increase, decrease, or realign appropriations” in the proposed budget called the national expenditure program (NEP) submitted by the President.

This is called the “power of the purse” to review and amend the NEP is a legitimate exercise of legislative authority, functioning as a check-and-balance mechanism to ensure public funds are spent in accordance with the law and national needs. When done following the regular legislative process, up to the plenary stage, they are considered lawful amendments.

But as Co has exposed, it is stupid to say that the Bicam is beyond and not impervious to the powers of the president. In fact, the president can wield his influence at all stages of the budget process, especially when he has enabled the election of the Senate president the House speaker.

This is why this power, has often been abused and politicized most vulnerably during the bicameral committee deliberations as the Senate and House versions of the budget are reconciled.

At that stage, insertions that have not been taken in any prior part of process, have been anomalously named by various euphemisms for pork barrel such as Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), Countrywide Development Fund (CDF), Congressional Initiative Allocation (CIA), Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), Lump-sum appropriations, Unprogrammed appropriations, and Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIF).

At the Bicam, the opportunity for insertion is almost a blank check because decisions can be horse-traded among a chosen few, ignoring transparency often resulting in a general appropriation bill (GAB) in excess over total expenditure ceiling proposed by the president.

Is it naivete or fear of being implicated that drove Pangandaman to try to fool the general public that the president can no longer influence any insertions, simply because the ball is in the court of Congress?

This is the same yarn that Martin Romualdez is saying – that he cannot be responsible because he is not a member of the bicameral process.

That is precisely what Zaldy Co belied. The hands of Marcos and Romualdez are everywhere.

PCO damage control

Second, I have always thought Dave Gomez was intelligent.

Zaldy Co’s narrative, albeit not under oath, is not hearsay. Of all people involved, it is Co who has “personal knowledge” of almost all the details in the budget process. He is not relaying another person’s story, he is sharing a first-hand experience and eyewitness account.

I think Gomez also went overboard assuring us that the man who cried wolf cannot be hiding in wolf’s clothing.

Atty Ranny Labayen in his vlog, retells his audience of that tired anecdote that usually the one who farts inside the elevator is the one who first shouts, “Who farted?”

Gomez’ attack bitch, Castro, on the other hand is in a state of panic and could do nothing but hurl “ad hominem” against the former chairman of the House appropriations committee who was not playing victim but was on the offensive, short of calling the president as the mastermind.

She should take a short vacation, given her most impossible task of defending the president at this late hour as she might be overtaken by a stroke or mistaken to be also snorting cocaine.

Pea-brained

Third, the role of the president is not so significant in the NEP stage which is Budget Secretary Pangandaman’s ballpark.

The most important role of the president in the budgetary process is his signature to the general appropriations bill (GAB) that survives Congress that morphed it into the general appropriations act (GAA).

The testimonies of Discaya couple, Brice Hernandez, Henry Alcantara, Roberto Bernardo, Orly Guteza and now Zaldy Co only deals with the accidens of the plunder of the century.

The smoking gun is actually Marcos’ signature that made the bill a law and authorized disbursements.

It is so essential that commonsense dictates without it, they will be no money in circulation; and without money involved, there will be no thievery.

Antonio Carpio, who served in the Supreme Court as associate justice, described the flood control scam of Bongbong Marcos as the “biggest corruption scandal” in history, surpassing the corruption levels during the martial law years of his father Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

The former magistrate attributes responsibility to President Marcos Jr. for approving budget insertions totaling around ₱421 billion in the Department of Public Works and Highways budget for 2025, considering the president’s subsequent veto of only ₱29 billion as “window dressing”.

Carpio explained, “President Marcos Jr. cannot escape liability because he could have vetoed it as it didn’t even come from the National Expenditure Program but inserted by Congress. He should have rejected it. If he had done that, he could have submitted a supplemental budget to address those items properly.

“But he allowed it, he signed the bill, so he owns it. He owns this P421 billion insertion.”

Echoes and boomerangs

Marcos’ paternal cousin, however, comes to his defense accusing Zaldy Co of attempting to destabilize the Marcos administration through allegations of graft-riddled insertions in the 2025 budget.

In an interview with the Inquirer, Congressman Toby Tiangco strummed the “destabilization” line: “Co’s decision to go public with his corruption claims without swearing to them under oath showed that the former House appropriations chair was not really after accountability but political unrest.”

“He’s now backed into a corner…wriggling his way out, framing someone else, and saying that he passed on the money he got to Marcos,” he added.

Tiangco reiterated his call for the Department of Foreign Affairs to immediately revoke Co’s passport, insisting that the 1987 Constitution allows travel restrictions for national security reasons even without a court order.

DFA, however, already clapped back at Tiangco last month, asserting that “the process to cancel a passport is not subject to arbitrary or political considerations.”

The DFA pointed out that under the New Passport Law, the agency may only cancel or revoke a passport if the passport acquired fraudulently; the passport was tampered with or issued erroneously; or ordered by the court when the holder has been convicted of a criminal offense or fugitive from justice

The department advised Tiangco to pursue judicial relief “rather than indulge in baseless suggestions.”

Former Undersecretary for Fiscal Policy and Monitoring Cielo Magno also megaphoned the Malacanang position in a Bilyonaryo News interview, asking why such insertions would be made during the bicameral deliberations instead of the initial budget proposal.

Speaking in the vernacular, she said “pwede na niya isaksak yun sa NEP pa lang.” (Marcos could have inserted the P100 billion as early as the preparations for the National Expenditure Program.)

Ronald Llamas, a stabled favorite of One News Channel 5, for his part, repeated the tired refrain that the revelations made by Zaldy Co benefits the opposition, particularly the Duterte camp.

Former Sceretary Jacinto Paras, however, dismissed the opinions of Tiango, Magno and Llamas as partisan defense of an indefensible president, saying “All corruption leads to Malacanang!”

Paras said Zaldy Co merely corroborated the smoking gun that have already been documented in the testimonies of DPWH officials Brice Hernandez, and Henry Alcantara before the Investigative Commission on Infrastructure, and Marine sergeant Orly Guteza before the Blue Ribbon Committee.

The core of those testimonies affirmed deliveries of billions in suitcases each containing P48 million to the residences of Romualdez in Forbes Park and in Aguado Street across Malacanang.

Conclusion

Co resigned from his post as appropriations committee chair in January. He left the country for medical treatment in the United States on July 19, missing the President’s July 28 State of the Nation Address where Mr. Marcos blasted corruption and corrupt officials, saying that they were shameless.

In the following month, the President disclosed the capture of a large chunk of the flood control projects by just 15 out of 2,000 private contractors, including several allegedly owned by Co and his family.

Mr. Marcos then went on a nationwide roadshow to “expose” unfinished, substandard and “ghost” projects, with amounts totaling in the billions of pesos, triggering investigations by the House and the Senate.

In September, the President created the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) to investigate irregularities in the flood control projects from 2016 to 2025.

It’s going four months of high-profile public relations campaign by the president and yet not a single case has been filed by anyone, not a single passport has been cancelled, not a single property or aircraft has been sequestered, not a single bank account has been frozen, and nobody has been handcuffed or sent to jail.

Yet mainstream media has been awashed with propaganda trying to pin down suspects below the level of the president and his maternal cousin and diversionary narratives by talking heads like Tito Sotto and Ping Lacson to “chill” the minds of the people.

Meanwhile, a mammoth people power is anticipated, many of whose participants are demanding for the resignation of the president who has no accomplishment for the past three years but political division of the people and an impending collapse of the economy, while corruption of the people money is at historical maximum record.

Enough is enough! Sobra na, tama na, palitan na!

Marcos Ali Dyan!

To be continued

   

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