Why are Marcos and Romualdez not being investigated for the ghost flood control scam?

BY all logic, they should be. If this happened in Japan, the two would have committed hara-kiri, either out of guilt or incompetence. If in Korea, they would have called for a press conference and bowed as deeply right after they announced their resignation. If in the US, probably just a threat of impeachment and their resignation.

To paraphrase a popular joke that circulated after Ninoy Aquino was killed: “Everyone knows Marcos and Romualdez are the masterminds of the ghost flood control scam — except 113 million Filipinos.”

The so-called “ghost flood control projects” constitute one of the biggest budgetary scandals in years — rivaling the pork barrel scams during the Aquino III administration forever. Yet despite mounting evidence, despite the Commission on Audit (COA) reports, despite first-hand testimonies from whistleblowers and local officials, no formal investigation has even touched President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. or his first cousin, resigned House Speaker Martin Romualdez.

Romualdez appeared before the Independent Commission on Infrastructure yesterday. But the proceedings were secret. Why should they be?

Why aren’t Romualdez and Marcos not being investigated? That is the question that must now be asked — openly, loudly, relentlessly.

The “ghost flood control projects” scandal involves hundreds of supposed infrastructure projects — mostly under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) — that either never existed, were grossly overpriced, or were padded through duplicate listings.

Suspicious

Many of these projects were clustered in a suspicious pattern: in congressional districts aligned with the House leadership, often linked to party-list groups or contractors with no proven capacity to undertake major civil works.

COA’s audit reports since 2022 have flagged anomalies in DPWH’s flood mitigation allocations: repeated entries, untraceable project sites, and “negative slippage” indicators showing zero accomplishment despite full releases of funds.

Billions have flowed from the national treasury, funneled through the DPWH regional offices, and finally into the pockets of fixers, contractors, and — if the emerging testimonies are to be believed — political patrons. And yet, the very top of the pyramid remains untouched.

The first layer of responsibility lies in the House of Representatives, which under then-speaker Romualdez has become a clearinghouse for “insertions.”

These “insertions” are not secret anymore. Every congressman wants a slice of the DPWH pie, and under Romualdez’s speakership, the slices became entire cakes.

When the 2023 and 2024 General Appropriations Acts were dissected, it became clear that flood control projects had mushroomed disproportionately — nearly P800 billion in combined allocations across two fiscal years, many tagged under vague “network plans” or “improvement programs.”

Insertions

Sen. Panfilo Lacson, before retiring as chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, had warned that “practically all senators and congressmen have insertions.” That was in 2022. By 2024, the system had metastasized into something worse: “ghost insertions.”

How can the House speaker, who presided over these budget hearings and led the bicameral negotiations, plead ignorance? Every single DPWH line item goes through the House leadership’s scrutiny before landing on the president’s desk for signature.

Romualdez’s fingerprints are all over the flood control racket — if not directly, then by proximity and institutional control.

But the bigger question is this: Why has the president remained silent on the accusations against his cousin Martin?

This scandal exploded not under another administration, but his own. His Public Works secretary, Manuel Bonoan, answered directly to him. His cousin was the speaker who controlled the budget. His Cabinet signed off on the disbursements.

Billions

If “billions in ghost projects” were indeed implemented — or not implemented, as the case may be — under this government’s watch, the principle of command responsibility should apply all the way to the top.

Marcos can’t claim ignorance of the allegations against his cousin Martin. His economic managers — particularly the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) and the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) — receive quarterly reports on infrastructure spending. They know where the money goes.

Sources in both the House and DPWH whisper that the scheme got to be “too big, too high up to expose.”

It allegedly involves layers of collusion — from the regional directors to district engineers, to legislative aides who encode budget amendments, to brokers who “arrange” contractors, all the way up to senior political patrons who collect commissions.

It was a racket institutionalized by years of impunity. But under Marcos Jr. and Romualdez, it reached industrial scale, so much so that the corrupt contractors became so rich they spent on fleets of luxury cars (in the case of Discayas), aircraft (in the case of Zaldy Co), their children spending millions of dollars on wine and dinners and signature items. District engineers and their assistants with modest salaries played at the casinos and lost P1 billion.

Plunder

This is not the small-time pork barrel of old. This is systematized plunder — flood money without floods, infrastructure without concrete, public works without public benefit.

And what has the president done? He created an Independent Commission on Infrastructure. That’s a total misnomer as it isn’t independent — it relies on funds on Marcos’ whim — nor is it a commission, a term reserved for constitutional bodies or those created by law, in order for it to have authority.

Under normal circumstances, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee would have pounced on this. But not now. The Senate itself is wary — some of its members benefited from similar insertions.

The committee’s chairman has been unusually quiet, issuing vague statements about “reviewing documents.” Meanwhile, whistleblowers have begun leaking photos and copies of “Notice to Proceed” documents that lead nowhere, and ”Certificates of Completion” for projects that don’t exist.

These are smoking guns. Yet the investigative machinery of the state — the Ombudsman, the DOJ, even the COA enforcement arm — has stalled. And the public is left to wonder: Has accountability become optional under Marcos and Romualdez?

The political reality cannot be ignored: Marcos Jr. and Martin Romualdez, heirs to a family dynasty that has regained its grip on power after decades in exile.

Influence

Romualdez’s influence as speaker was unmatched. He controlled the purse, the House patronage, and even committee assignments. The president, for his part, needs a compliant legislature to push through his policies and protect his administration from political storms.

It’s a perfect symbiosis: the president controls the bureaucracy; the speaker provides the money.

The ghost flood control scam mirrors old tricks perfected in the pork barrel era:

– Creation of dummy projects. DPWH listings contain vague project titles (“Construction of Drainage Improvement” or “Slope Protection Works”) with no precise location or GPS coordinates.

– Allotment through congressional insertions. Legislators assign funds to pet districts using “amendments” negotiated with the budget committee.

– Release to contractors, their accomplices. Small or newly registered firms win bids, sometimes with identical owners or addresses.

– Issuance of fake accomplishment reports. The documents get stamped, signed and filed.

– Collection of “commissions.” Brokers, engineers and political handlers split the spoils.

It’s elegant in its simplicity and devastating in its theft. The projects are “implemented” on paper, and everyone gets paid — except the Filipino taxpayer, who gets nothing but flooded streets and broken trust. The corrupt district engineers’ term for these: “internal projects,” i.e., on paper activities that never leave their offices.

Media

What makes the situation worse is that media coverage has been tepid, even fearful. Only a handful of outlets — mostly independent online platforms — have pursued the story. The mainstream networks, whose owners rely on congressional franchises and government advertising, have been almost entirely mute. The result: a scandal of national proportions treated as bureaucratic trivia.

Meanwhile, billions vanish, contractors vanish, and the public outrage that should have erupted remains drowned in apathy.

But Filipinos are not fools. The pattern is visible. A multitude of barangay know of a “flood control project” that was never built. Every mayor has seen DPWH engineers come and go with envelopes. The rot is too widespread to hide forever.

We really can’t expect the big fish to be identified and caught, as long as the nation’s top two political figures — Marcos and Romualdez — remain shielded from scrutiny.

Marcos Jr. cannot escape responsibility by hiding behind bureaucratic and legalistic language. The funds were disbursed under his administration. The projects were approved by his cousin, it was his signature that enacted the budget.

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Why are Marcos and Romualdez not being investigated for the ghost flood control scam?
Source: Breaking News PH