By Robert B. Roque, Jr.
Last week, Malacañang announced that nearly 20,000 reports had poured into Sumbong sa Pangulo. Bongbong Marcos’s online platform for public complaints was bombarded with mostly questionable public works projects.
That number should jolt Malacañang and his administration as much as the earthquakes that hit Cebu and Davao Oriental. These are not a simple backlog of grievances — that’s like tectonic plates moved by public anger, exposing the rot long concealed by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) and accelerated since Marcos Jr. sat as president in 2022.
Under the new DPWH chief — who has so far suited himself up as a reformer — a nationwide audit confirmed 421 ghost projects out of 8,000. Secretary Vince Dizon himself validated these numbers, growing by the day as he himself grows numb over the proofs of corruption by the department’s “bad apples.”
In fact, his vetting process has moved him from exposing fake flood control works and dubious contracts to stumbling over rebuild and repeat jobs on the same roads again and again — all under the pretense of “road reblocking.” Now, Dizon has imposed an indefinite suspension of all such projects, calling out what everyone already knew but no one in DPWH dared say aloud: They profit from destroying the roads. They profit again from rebuilding them.
While Dizon appears serious in tightening the screws on the DWPH, the least Marcos could do is provide his crusading Cabinet member with the true allies that he needs to clean up the department. Now, as much as Nicasio Conti’s recent appointment as DPWH undersecretary — to replace a shady predecessor in the agency — appears good and sound on paper, I feel somewhat off about it.
Let me explain. Conti, being the head of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), was tasked mainly with recovering what? Answer: the ill-gotten wealth amassed during the 20-year regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the father of the current president. Well, I don’t know how successful Conti was in doing that.
This brings Firing Line to this question: Can a man who could not pursue the stolen billions of the past now be trusted to guard the trillions for public works of the present?
The complaints lodged before Malacañang are a mirror reflecting the people’s exhaustion with recycled corruption and empty audits.
With earthquakes rattling our provinces from Luzon to Visayas, to Mindanao in the past weeks, somehow, it feels like the heavens are helping expose the DPWH deceit in public roads, bridges, government buildings, schools, and other public infrastructure.
And while I hate to say this ominously, the shaking will not stop — not in our cities, not in our conscience, unless there is a reckoning far deeper than audits and suspensions. Punishment and comeuppance must happen. Then, the change in governance, in system, in spirit, and in the very character of those who lead and follow must take root.
Unless these are done, another fault line would surely open beneath our democracy. And one day, it won’t just be the bridges that fall.
* * *
SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View via X. Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com