Photo courtesy: Kitty Duterte facebook page
People feasted on 100 roasted cows and a huge crocodile cake during the prayer rally at Rizal Park in Davao City. At the Freedom Park a group called Kunsensya Davao held their own event raging against the scandal of ghost and substandard flood control projects and the attendant magma of corruption unprecedented in the annals of Philippine history. Elsewhere, a group of durian growers invites people to come eat as much they can for free!!!.
It’s different modes of expression. The prayer rally was for the general awakening of the nation against the unsatiable thieves that lurk in Congress, Malacanang Palace, in cahoots with what Sec. Vince Dizon describes as “mga hayup”, referring to the DPWH District Engineers and contractors behind the ghost and substandard projects.
In Metro Manila, people poured out to the streets. In Luneta, a throng of people from different political ideologies gathered condemning corruption arising from DPWH projects but sparing Pres. Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos and cousin Speaker Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez. In just a few hours the coterie fizzled out to join other rallies as hecklers.
Senate Blue Ribbon Committee Chairman, Panfilo “Ping” Lacson who had gotten hold of additional facts surrounding the grand thievery of the government’s coffers, announced that the “Original Sin” of corruption is in Congress.
Unexpectedly, as though he had his light of Damascus, former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio came out from hibernation to proclaim that President Marcos cannot escape accountability.
If that is unexpected from Justice Carpio, consider this first mystery. In the beginning the heavens rained Metro Manila and Luzon including Mindoro for 40 days and 40 nights causing diluvial massive floods and destructions leading to the revelation of multi-billion pesos worth of ghost and substandard flood mitigating projects.
On the eve of September 21, all the media entities warned every hour on the hour the coming of super typhoon which will not spare Metro Manila. Indeed the weather atmosphere was foreboding. By daybreak however the sky was bright and there was sunlight. Rallyists trooped to the venues of rallies and stood their ground.
The heaven’s interventions should not be ignored. But kleptocracy is undeterred. In the House of Romualdez, Davao City Representative Isidro Ungab exposed another unconscionable attempt at chipping billions of pesos from Foreign Assisted Projects.
Because the big media establishments stonewall his expose’, he turned to the social media platforms to air what he calls “the reckless and indefensible defunding of Foreign-Assisted Projects (FAPs) in both the 2024 and 2025 national budgets”.
Ungab warned, “These budgets are perhaps the most distorted and compromised financial plans ever passed by Congress. We negotiated loans, signed agreements with the President’s authority, paid commitment fees—and yet, when the appropriations bill was signed into law, billions in project funding had mysteriously vanished from our programmed appropriations and were dumped into the Unprogrammed budget. This is fiscal sabotage, plain and simple.”
Congressman Ungab’s expose’ is not just the tip of the iceberg that is to be ignored by Malacanang. As skipper of the ship, I don’t know whether BBM and his co-captain Ralph Recto could stir this government away from the path of collision. Already S. Korea pulled out its financial commitment to the Philippines because of massive corruption.
When PRRD left the country, the Philippines was in the league of “investment Grade” countries. Today we are in the dump and no financial institution would risk granting a loan in a country still run by hungry crocodiles. The government treasury is running short of cash.
The national government bureaucracy stinks from scandalous corruption that was spawned in Congress. The conspiracy of the House leadership and the communist fronts in demonizing Vice President Sara Duterte over the ₱125-million Confidential and Intelligence Funds, it turned out, was a veritable shield to hide the plot to rob the government coffers of tens of billions of pesos in flood control projects through the Department of Public Works and Highways.
As we see now, the ₱125k is not even a speck of dust in the magnitude of purloined people’s tax that went to the pockets of VP Sara’s accusers.
The Commission on Audit gave the Office of the Vice President a clean bill of health. On the other hand her principal accusers, Appropriations Committee Chair, Zaldy Co, had fled the country with his loot and his fleet of jet, helicopters and luxury cars while Speaker Romualdez has resigned.
Where are we leading to in this turbulent sea of corruption and a President who asks the impoverished nation: “Bakit nagkaganito ang gobyerno natin?’’
