By Ade S. Fajardo
President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has created the Independent Commission for Infrastructure to uncover anomalous public works projects that were funded and implemented in the past 10 years.
Marcos himself exposed the biggest corruption scandal to rock the country in recent history.
He told lawmakers “mahiya naman kayo” for getting kickbacks from billions of pesos worth of substandard, or even ghost, flood control projects.
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The whiplash has been dizzying.
The two chambers of Congress are in a battle for the custody of one assistant district engineer who showed pictures of bundles of money in tens of millions of pesos, and named two senators as having demanded “commitment” money from infrastructure projects in the province of Bulacan.
Why are senators and congressmen deep in the muck of budget corruption when their principal function is to enact or review existing laws?
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Power begets money. Money paves the road to power.
By Senator Ping Lacson’s count, there are at least 67 congressmen who were government contractors before throwing their hats into the political arena.
The impunity is self-evident. An incumbent congressman from Tarlac reportedly signed a multi-million-peso contract in his capacity as general manager of his own construction corporation.
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Some contractors have gained political foothold through the party-list platform.
Regional or ethnic party-list groups have risen in number despite the obvious fact that regions and provinces are already represented by their district representatives. Yet the Commission on Elections accredits them with efficient regularity.
With government spending now in the trillions of pesos, it has become obvious that these legislators have no clear legislative agenda except to dip their fingers into one law that truly matters to them — the General Appropriations Act.
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The President surely deserves commendation for detonating the bombs of infrastructure corruption right in the faces of those suspected of facilitating this thievery — the two houses of Congress in joint session assembled.
What is yet to be explained, however, is why he appointed Emmanuel Bonoan to head the Department of Public Works and Highways and why he chose to retain him as such in the last three years.
Lacson said Bonoan’s daughter is the treasurer of MBB Global Properties Corp., said to be owned by Candaba Mayor Rene Maglanque, along with Bonoan and his now famously rich Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo.
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Bonoan could not effectively police his ranks with three fingers pointing back at him. Personal interest will always get in the way of the public interest.
Maglangque’s family also owns Globalcrete Builders which cornered many big projects in Bulacan during Bonoan’s tenure.
The Bulacan group’s tentacles are so elastic that they are said to have reached even the remote shores of Antique.
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These contractors are loaded to the brim. Well-meaning and qualified people cannot match their machinery in Philippine elections.
Will candidates without money still join electoral contests? And will the thinking voters, those who weigh track records and platforms, continue to troop to poll places despite getting repeatedly trounced by the transactional majority?/WDJ