Their appellations rhyme. And it should.
Both share a commonality – they dip their fingers into funds that do not belong to them. In the process, both enrich themselves with the perks of the ultra rich, at taxpayers’ expense. Both are thieves.
The similarities, however, end there. One is more privileged than the other. The former NEDA secretary Winnie Monsod explains the pie-sharing of each government project: contractor gets 8-10% (allowed by law as their business profit), while the congressman or senator gets 25-31% (not allowed by law).
To attract a contractor into a well-paid secret modus vivendi, congressman or senator charms the contractor with more shares of the public loot. That is how it works. It is a partnership in crime that is as common as the clock. Yet that is an incomplete picture because the arrangement needs the connivance of the government engineers.
Normally a 15% share of the loot goes to the engineers. The congressman or senator, the masterful conductor of this evil orchestration, can entice the engineer with more kickback money. It is clear to us who the masterminds of these crimes are – not the contractor alone, not the engineers alone.
There is another modus operandi – ghost projects. In the next fiscal year, the same project will still be funded in the National Expenditure Program to cover the lie that the previous year’s money was ghosted. In all cases, corruption is disguised as infrastructure.
Because it needs a triumvirate to operate, the public works corruption is no doubt one of the greatest reasons why the Philippines is a poor country. Senator Panfilo Lacson bared that as much as 60% of infrastructure funds are lost to corruption, counting the commissions that are part of SOP. Only 40% is left for the actualization of the project. How can political families not be attracted to go into dynasties? Business is good. Political opportunism keeps them powerful.
That gives rise to a second privilege that congressmen and senators have – they will be free of investigation. And that exactly is what is happening in the Senate and the House of Representatives now.
In the senate, several contractors have already been harshly pilloried. Some of them may even go to jail. We can already see the writing on the wall: this is a game not unlike Janet Lim Napoles’s where senators and congressmen will never go to jail.
Notice the defense mechanisms in the spectacles of both houses: bamboozling, intimidation and theatrics before the cameras. Those are meant to project innocence because they are not. Like the contractors they are investigating, legislator-investigators are consumed by greed.
How many senators are compromised?
We begin with the most obvious, the senate president who received campaign contributions from one government contractor. A case should already be filed against Francis Escudero that aims for his removal from office. A similar case is Joel Villanueva who accepted a campaign donation from a government contractor. He merits nothing but removal from public office too.
If we follow the Blue Ribbon Chair Rodante Marcoleta’s predictable behavior, he has protected senators identified with Rodrigo Duterte: his vice chair Bong Go has come out with his own opening spiel protecting himself. Where in the world can we find such ridiculous acting displays? Villanueva, caught in the act lobbying Bulacan district engineer Henry Alcantara, is part of the committee. Duterte’s secretary for Public Works and Highways Mark Villar is also in the committee.
Will they be investigated? That is doubtful. They have not even inhibited themselves. Our legislators are an elite class. They do not face scrutiny as any other government official. They are untouchables. Already, one such party list congressman linked to the flood control mess, Ferdinand Beltran, has complained to the Department of Justice why he was included in the immigration lookout bulletin order (ILBO).
A corruption scandal is being investigated by way of another scandal – conflict of interest. Both the Senate and the House are guilty of it. Consider alone the presence of Mark Villar who sits as both investigator and a potential subject of investigation. Villar oversaw many of the flood control projects now under scrutiny when he was secretary of DPWH.
Under Villar in fact, there was the noisy ruckus in the House about budget insertions totaling P75 billion discovered in the 2019 DPWH budget. Duterte’s Budget secretary Benjamin Diokno admitted it came from him. Because of the exposé, the money was instead distributed to senators and congressmen as pork barrel funds. Pax furum – the peace of thieves.
How did Mark Villar react when the super huge budget insertion was exposed? He feigned ignorance. Benjamin Diokno corrected him – the insertion was discussed in a cabinet meeting and Duterte did not object to it. Villar did not also complain. Here’s the proper summary – Duterte knew, Villar covered.
This incident already demonstrates to us Villar’s oversight skills at a time when corruption flourished under his leadership. Today he is his own investigator. We have a Senate that violates the basic principles of accountability and justice.
Under Villar’s watch, budget insertion was not just the norm. There were ghost projects and missing funds, contractor syndicates, and geotagging fraud. Villar only admitted the geotagging deceptions only in 2025.
Will Mark Villar’s complicity be revealed in the senate investigations? Will senators Escudero, Go and Villanueva be investigated? There is no hope for that. They are privileged gods. The masterminds of their own crimes can only behave in self-defense.
In the House, the test is contractor congressman Elizaldy Co. Will he be investigated? There are said to be 67 congressmen who are contractors of their own government projects. Also in the House, there is a look-alike wig-alike Marcoleta, his son Paolo, who also overrules each time the name Rodrigo Duterte or any allusion to the Duterte administration is mentioned. As members of Iglesia ni Cristo, is that the marching order of their sect to protect Duterte at all costs? The son Marcoleta is also compromised like the father.
We started with merely an aperitif — the list of the top fifteen contractors bared by Malacañang. That is not the main course scandal the public waits for. The more explosive one would be the list of congressmen and senators who own their own construction companies, often using dummies to conceal real ownership so as to enter government biddings.
The Filipino public, now fatigued by government corruption, asks: Can an impartial investigation be achieved?
Both houses of Congress can insist on their own charades to protect themselves. That does not come without a forewarning. The public is tired of pretenses because they can smell one when they see one. The choice is the public’s to react. The current Indonesian model of unrest against government would be a neighborly example.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
