Marcos forewarned, inadvertently or otherwise, flood-control contractors
IT was in panic that the monsoon would worsen flooding in Metro Manila and several other provinces that President Marcos, in his July 28 SONA, revealed that he inspected several flood-control projects that were defective and crumbled by the monsoon and three other typhoons and was preparing charges against the contractors responsible.
He was worried that the nation would again be outraged and even ridicule him, as they did when, right after he boasted his government had built 5,500 flood-control projects in his 2024 SONA, the metropolis, Bulacan, and two other provinces were inundated on a scale never before seen. In a press conference days after, he disclosed the names of the contractors who had undertaken these projects, and even pointed out that only 15 construction companies had accounted for 20 percent of these projects’ total budget. He taunted media to investigate these firms, who owned them, and what happened to these.
Marcos probably thought he had pulled a PR coup to draw outrage away from him since, after all, these defective projects all occurred under his watch, with the public works secretary reporting only to him.
He worsened an already bad situation. His press conference last Aug. 11 listing the biggest contractors of flood-control projects merely alerted these unscrupulous firms and their conspirators in the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to hide their “tracks.” Documents will conveniently be lost, such as “contract designs, project completion reports,” one contractor told me.
“Defective flood-control projects, if not very strictly monitored from start to finish, in fact, are nearly perfect crimes,” he added. “The contractor can just argue in the courts that the rains were so torrential the project failed, and it was an ‘act of God.’ Even the evidence, the structure instance, would have been washed away.”
Collapse
What is clearly an indication that we cannot expect much from Marcos’ braggadocio that he will go after the contractors is what happened with the collapsed P1.2 billion Cabagan-Santa Maria Bridge connecting Cabagan and Santa Maria towns in Isabela. Inaugurated Feb. 1, it collapsed on Feb. 27.
Marcos himself visited the site and blamed a flawed design. The DPWH engineer staunchly defended the design, pointing out that it adhered to the Bridge Code of the Philippines. Gradually, the blame was put on a dump truck laden with boulders that tried to cross the bridge. To this date, no one has been officially identified to be responsible for the bridge’s collapse, despite expressions of outrage over it.
What also indicates that Marcos’ outrage over the “ghost” or defective flood-control projects is either only for show or that he is totally inept in governance is that no task force, either within the DPWH or outside, has been organized to investigate these scandalous projects or non-existent projects. The public has been outraged for nearly three weeks, but fired the public works and highways secretary, Manuel Bonoan, only yesterday. Did he want to be sure that Bonoan won’t spill the beans? If he resigned and wasn’t fired, did Bonoan make sure first that records had been spirited away that would have proven the DPWH officials’ culpability?
Standard operating procedure for such failures is to appoint so-called forensic engineers trained to determine the cause of these disasters. Marcos has not designated any forensic engineer or engineers to investigate the defective flood-control projects or even run-of-the-mill investigators to determine if there were really projects funded by the DPWH but are non-existent. I don’t think he even knows there are “forensic engineers.” What has made corruption involving government infrastructure projects widespread is the fact that penalties are so ridiculously low, involving mainly suspension or blacklisting on future contracts.
However, this is far from being a criminal conviction — but merely an internal administrative measure.
Penalties
I found no public reports of DPWH contractors being criminally convicted for mere failure to undertake a project. Most cases involve administrative penalties, investigations, or allegations of graft or fraud, none of which have culminated in a proven criminal conviction under this specific offense. Indeed, the DPWH engineers and private contractors appear to be joined at the hip, in reality, an elite club.
There are convictions (or acquittals) of DPWH officials or contractors in contexts such as falsification of documents or graft — but these are not specifically about failing to complete a project.
Part of our problem is the legal system, and the capability of expensive lawyers — with solid networks among judges — to get courts to acquit even the obviously guilty. A high-profile graft conviction involving a DPWH engineer and contractor for falsifying project completion was even overturned by the Sandiganbayan in 2024. Some contractors — like those involved in an overpriced lamp-post procurement — have faced graft charges but were later acquitted by the Supreme Court because of the sloppy job done by the prosecutors.
Only a few contractors have been suspended or blacklisted for poor performance, falsified documents, or delayed projects. One was suspended in 2015 for allegedly submitting falsified tax clearance documents. Another was blacklisted in 2018 for project slippage, failure to correct delays, and submission of counterfeit performance guarantees. Another had been suspended several times, but still managed to get contracts from the DPWH. No contractor has been convicted for “ghost projects.”
Marcos is probably proud that he has spun the massive corruption involving flood-control projects to portray himself instead as a crusader against corruption. As the former anti-Marcos, but now nuanced pro-Marcos The Daily Tribune put it in an above-the-fold banner yesterday: “PBBM: Corruption will be crushed.”
What has he been smoking? Marcos’ failure to clamp down on the ghost or defective flood-control project will be so obvious when not a single contractor is arrested and cleared. Even worse, no contractor would now dare to undertake flood-control projects, fearful over that industry’s reputation, or that they will be drawn into the scandal one way or another. The result would be less flood-control systems just when people realize that Marcos’ investigations were just PR, just when the season of the floods and typhoons drowns us next year.
It will, in fact, be one of the biggest issues that will make it impossible for a Marcos-Romualdez puppet to become president in 2028. After all, using taxpayers’ money to make their lives miserable, and even kill them, has few competition as the worst crime against a people.
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Marcos forewarned, inadvertently or otherwise, flood-control contractors
Source: Breaking News PH
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