By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
While the flood control scandal has burst wide open, the public pushes on for just and burning demands: the whole truth and full accountability.
Yes, there had been breakthroughs and damning evidence brought to light these past weeks in the parallel investigations by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, the Independent Commission on Infrastructure (ICI), and even by the new leadership of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).
These have fed more fuel to the fire of a nation’s despair in the call for justice — not the watered-down, selective variety that shields the powerful, but the kind that cuts across parties, positions, and political agendas.
Big names have fallen from within the Senate, but make no mistake, the people will not rest or be satisfied with sacrificial lambs. We want the entire machinery of plunder exposed, unmasked, stripped, and punished – all the way up!
So far, Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson’s maverick grip on the Senate probe — as well as his long disassociation with pork barrels and particularly the budgeting in the 19th Congress — puts him in a position of integrity to tread on with a no-holds-barred stance.
It’s easy to recognize this in his words, branding the tagging of several senators in the mess as “inside job” and “robbery” against the Filipino people. He calls it as it is: cash deliveries to DPWH engineers, kickback schemes dressed as “leadership funds,” insertions running into hundreds of billions as plain and pure plunder.
And if the trail leads to senators, then so be it. In his words, Lacson said: “Almost all senators” in the 19th Congress inserted around P100 billion worth of items in the 2025 General Appropriations Act. This spelling out of the truth is what is expected of him and, by the power given to him by the people, may he never falter.
Magalong’s exit
Like many netizens, I share the grief of Baguio City Mayor Benjie Magalong’s exit from the ICI. His resignation was abrupt and draped in legalese, cited no less by the Palace. What an irony: that the very leadership that brought him in had the timing to raise the constitutionality of his appointment in the heat of the fight to rip the veil off this flood control conspiracy.
True, and I agree that the Constitution bars elected officials from holding public appointments. But not all is lost. Magalong did achieve certain wins before walking away from the ICI. He had his eyes on the ground, uncovering systemic rot in the DPWH with the new secretary, Vince Dizon.
Magalong’s participation might have been short, but it is corroborative. And I expect him not to be silenced by his mere absence in the ICI.
Most disappointing
What disappoints me more, actually, is that out of the 21 already recommended for charges by the National Bureau of Investigation over this multi-billion scandal in public works and congressional collusion, only two are identified with what many netizens now refer to as the “House of RepresentaTHIEVES!”
For billions in “ghost projects” to vanish into the pockets of the powerful and greedy few, the public asks: How can this have happened under the very nose of Speaker Martin Romualdez?
The public is not blind to the spectacle of their lifestyles, nor deaf to whispers of cash deliveries to the Speaker’s own residence — something yet to be proven. But then the nagging question is: How much does the President know about this, and would he be willing to grill his own cousin, or would he just keep silent and look the other way?
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