“Over 5,500 flood works have been finished,” President Bongbong Marcos Jr. bragged in his State of the Nation Address, July 22. “More ongoing.”
Prove it. Itemize on Malacañang’s website the projects; locations; amounts; work scopes and durations; constructors, expertise, classifications; equipment; materials; supervising engineers; quality and completion inspectors; accountants; auditors.
Most important: the proponent senator or congressman, local government official and Cabinet secretary in charge.
Citizens can then check. Was the flood control in their locale worth it, openly bid and done right? Or was it fake?
BBM should be transparent. For three days and nights following his report, floods ravaged all seven Luzon regions. Plus two in the Visayas and five in Mindanao.
Voters need to know if their local political dynasty plundered – again. Those local dynasts belong to either of two national groupings.
BBM can’t escape the Philippine Area of Responsibility like VP Sara Duterte. It was he, not her, who uttered “5,500.” All she did was appoint herself “designated survivor” as alibi for snubbing the President’s annual report.
Let Sara remain Manila-phobic. In 2019, she slammed the use of Hotdog hit “Manila” for the Philippine-hosted SEA Games. “They carried the Philippine flag, so why play the song ‘Manila’?” she growled then. What’s it to her that Greater Manila last week relived the anguish of 2009’s Superstorm Ondoy.
Sara is inured to deluges. She was mum when Congress in January 2024 revealed her brother Rep. Paolo Duterte’s P51-billion infrastructure fund for 2020-2022. Despite that huge public works amount, rains flooded their Davao City first district in August 2020, twice in 2021, four months each in 2022 and 2023 and thrice in 2024.
House appropriations committee head Zaldy Co detailed “the highest ever congressional district allocation in history:”
• In 2020, Malacañang proposed P4.6 billion for Rep. Paolo; Congress raised it to P13.745 billion;
• In 2021, Malacañang planned P9.67 billion; Congress granted him P25 billion;
• In 2022, Malacañang offered P10 billion; Congress gave P13.04 billion.
“Malacañang” meant presidential daddy Rodrigo Duterte, 2016-2022; “Congress” meant puppet Speaker.
Last week’s floods shuttered VP Sara’s Disaster Operations Center in low-lying Quezon City. Still her staff doled relief. In Taylor Swift’s Munich concert, Sara must have hummed to the tune of “Midnight Rain.”
Confluence of storm, high tide, street garbage and corruption caused the flooding. Typhoon and tide have coincided countless times through millenniums. Spaniards introduced “basura” in lieu of indios’ composting. Plunder came with the Post-Independence political elite.
Politicos and bureaucrats ignore “adaptation.” As far back as 1975, urban planner Arch. Felino Palafox Jr. and colleagues drew a metro development blueprint. Included: estero cleanup, sewer digging, park creation, watershed protection.
A Pasig spillway to Laguna de Bay was built only in 1986. No Parañaque outflow to Manila Bay was ever tunneled. Like a sink with no drain, the country’s largest lake overflows every rainy half of the year. Pasig, Tatalon and Tullahan river dredging was left to private San Miguel Corp., P3 billion of its own money in 2021-2023.
But Rodrigo Duterte’s 25 reclamations in Manila Bay clogged sewers in Cavite, Bataan, Pampanga, Bulacan and the National Capital. His fake white beach gathers trash. To pave it, tons of dolomite rock in two Cebu protected areas had to be crushed.
Today, BBM is silent about forest destruction. His DENR Sec. Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga abets trespassers in Marikina Watershed’s Masungi Georeserve. As well, 16 quarriers in adjacent Montalban, led by predecessor, political dynast Mike Defensor.
Result: yearly loss of lives, property and memorabilia in Rodriguez, San Mateo, Marikina, Antipolo, Cainta, Pasig, Taguig, Pateros, San Juan and Quezon City.
DPWH spends P1 billion a day to contain inundations. So why do floods deepen and widen, senator Joel Villanueva asks.
Ex-senator Panfilo Lacson unearthed the answer long ago. Politicos and bureaucrats do not kickback part of flood works – they steal everything. It was P836 billion in 2017-2023, plus P245 billion this 2024, totaling P1.081 trillion in ghost projects.
In 2019, House majority leader Rolando Andaya accused then-budget secretary Ben Diokno of inserting P332 billion for bogus flood works during Duterte’s first three years. Of that, P385 million went to a Bicol town that state engineers said never floods.
The town mayor, a contractor, is stepfather of Diokno’s son-in-law, a former stockholder. Diokno denied knowing the mayor. The ombudsman never investigated him.
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Newsman Vlad Bunoan has colon cancer. You may know him from LSGH 1983 or UP Diliman 1988. Or from BusinessWorld, Manila Times, Today, Business Mirror, ABS-CBN Publishing or ABS-CBN News Online where he is deputy editor.
Last week the malignant mass was surgically excised. Recuperating in Capitol Medical Center, Vlad awaits analysis of its severity. Medical bills, excluding post-op, will exceed P700,000; PhilHealth covers only a fraction.
Away from family, he depends on friends. Any help is welcome: Vladimir Bunoan GCash 09479944622, or BPI S/A 3946 8570 55.
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