Zaldy fingers Marcos; Marcos fingers Zaldy… and Romualdez

The ‘insertions’ explained

INDEED, police investigators are so familiar with this scenario, and we’ve seen it depicted in so many crime documentaries. Partners in crime, facing hard evidence of their misdeeds, accuse each other. The mastermind claims he was misunderstood; his assassin claims he wouldn’t have done it if the mastermind had not paid him.

This is exactly what President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Zaldy Co., former congressman and chairman of the House appropriations committee, have ended up in with former House speaker Martin Romualdez, in their attempts to exonerate themselves from any involvement in the “insertion” scam.

For starters, it really amazes me how the likes of Sen. Panfilo Lacson and Senate President Vicente Sotto III can face themselves in the mirror after creating doubts about Co’s disclosures in the public mind. Why would a small-time congressman (nominated by the so-so Ako Bicol party-list) claim that Marcos Jr., the most powerful man in the country whose term ends three years from now, had illegally manipulated the 2025 budget to favor contractors, who gave him [Marcos] P25 billion in kickbacks?

How could Co have the papers to show that Marcos had a list of 800 projects that he wanted to be funded by the people’s money, a fourth of which he would hijack and just put in his bank account. How could he have found an “actor,” a former Marine even, to claim in the Senate that with his team, he delivered billions of pesos to the residence of Martin Romualdez?

I was told by very knowledgeable sources that Romualdez had told Co three months ago to “stay out of the country” and that he and Marcos would take care of this crisis. However, Romualdez had stopped communicating with him, and Co, suspecting that he was being set up as the scapegoat, decided to “tell all” before the most expensive assassin in the world was hired to eliminate him.

Junk

Romualdez is said to be planning to throw Marcos under the bus. With Marcos’ dwindling political support, he could not get Romualdez back his position as House speaker, and the latter is said to be angry that his cousin could have junked him so easily. Romualdez will just run his business empire that includes media and mining companies, it is said, rather than go to jail.

Have we lost our common sense? How on earth could a mediocre party-list congressman have inserted P100 billion worth of projects into the 2025 budget law, if he didn’t have the authority of the president and the House speaker?

What Co described, other than the ghost flood-control projects, is another innovation in the dark art of corruption invented by this most corrupt regime: Enacting into the final General Appropriations Act appropriations that had not been deliberated nor decided upon by the House of Representatives and Senate. This was done through the cover of the bicameral conference committee, set up and empowered — to save time for the entire Congress — to amend the appropriations bill approved by the majority of the legislature for a consensus of the two chambers.

Officially this was undertaken by the “small committee” of the bicameral conference committee consisting of the House appropriations committee chairman Zaldy Co on behalf of House speaker Martin Romualdez, and several other members, among them former Senate president Chiz Escudero, Sen. Grace Poe, and representatives Stella Quimbo of Marikina and 4Ps party-list Marcelino Libanan.

Mystery

The big mystery here is who else were the small committee members who approved the insertions. Navotas Rep. Tobias Tiangco claims that even the minutes of the meetings of this small committee containing their approval of 800 “insertions” worth P100 billion have been kept under lock and key.

Co claims that it was Marcos Jr. who ultimately ordered these placed in the budget law, with him and Romualdez doing this vile deed for him.

We don’t really know how they did this: Did they forge the signatures of the other members of the committee, or did they bribe them? The latter would be quite credible: Co claims Marcos’ kickbacks amounted to P25 billion. It would be small change if Co and Romualdez convinced him to give the other four members of the small committee P250 million to go along with the scheme.

How the final bill with its “insertions” got into law is such a huge mystery — the first time a bill was hijacked into law. I cannot fathom Senator Lacson and many pretend-analysts’ stupid question — why would Marcos have ordered these “insertions” put into the budget law when he could have put them into himself into the budget proposal he submitted to Congress.

I don’t know if Lacson’s question reveals his ignorance of the budget process — even after his 12 years in the Senate — or his adherence to the propaganda line adopted by Marcos’ minions.

Budget

The yearly budget preparation starts with the budget department issuing a budget call, in which it describes the parameters for all agencies; for instance, in cases of a bad year in revenues, it would require cuts in their proposed budgets. Government agencies prepare and rank their proposals for programs, projects and activities, following DBM guidelines and performance targets.

Submissions are subject to technical budget hearings and evaluation. The DBM consolidates and reviews agency submissions, with further scrutiny and deliberation in the Cabinet. The Development Budget Coordinating Committee finalizes the spending program ahead of presidential approval. The president submits the proposed budget (the National Expenditure Program, or NEP) to Congress within 30 days after the official opening of the legislative session each year.

If one understands this process, one can see why Marcos had no other means of having the projects he favored and which would generate kickbacks for him, to be put into the budget law — except through insertions, when the bill is taken up by the small committee of the bicameral committee.

The DPWH budget submitted is, for instance, drawn up by its leadership after getting the proposals of each of its engineering districts, unconcerned of course whether a contractor has committed to give kickbacks to Marcos.

Co, in a post on his Facebook page, himself pointed to this scheme: “I respectfully urge the concerned parties to first review the full list of alleged ‘insertions,’ done under the directive of President Marcos and clearly reflected in the GAA 2025. You may cross-check the NEP 2025 to verify if the same line items appear there. To assist in this, I have attached the list with the exact page references from the General Appropriations Act 2025.

I suggest that before making statements that may unfairly prejudice the issue, one should examine the documents in full. The public deserves a fair, complete and evidence-based investigation, not conclusions drawn without first seeing the whole picture.”

Kickback

However, this is the part that Co evaded explaining: It was he who talked to the contractors if they would give Marcos the 25 percent kickback, if he and Speaker Romualdez included in the “insertions” a contract they had already identified that would be undertaken by them. Co, in his video clip, however, hinted that two other Marcos officials were involved in talking to the contractors:

This is a reflection of the fact that Marcos sees nothing wrong in corruption. I don’t think of any other president (except President Joseph Estrada perhaps) who would have the face to tell the House speaker to undertake such a scheme for him to acquire bribes. Perhaps it is because the speaker was his cousin that he could talk so frankly.

Despite attempts by Malacañang and the president’s loyalists to dismiss Co’s bombshell exposé as “wild accusations” or “pure hearsay,” the gravity, specific details and corroborative contexts of his allegations ring true.

Notably, Co claims he personally delivered suitcases of money, representing 25 percent “commission” — or P25 billion — directly to the president’s residences and Malacañang, accompanied by his trusted aides. Co’s account gains further weight from the testimony of Orly Guteza, a former Marine turned security aide, who previously testified before the Senate about similar deliveries — in the same kind of suitcases — to Romualdez. Guteza’s testimony, though challenged, again by Lacson, that the notary’s signature had been faked, remains unrefuted in substance.

Co’s allegations are remarkably specific: He enumerates the identity of his staff who allegedly witnessed and documented the deliveries — Paul Estrada, Mark Tecsay and his security detail — and required his staff to take photos of the suitcases delivered. Lacson ignorantly claims the date stamp in some of the photos of the suitcases containing the cash indicated these were delivered in 2024, while the insertions were made in 2025. He wasn’t listening to the testimonies of the corrupt DPWH engineers, who disclosed that many of the kickbacks were delivered way in advance of the actual approval of the contracts, so these contractors would already “lock in” to these.

If he wants to build up his credibility, Co should name his accomplices, the members of the small committee that approved the insertions, and who in the Office of the President helped him in getting contractors to promise P100 billion in kickbacks.

What Chavit Singson was to the ousted Estrada in October 2001, Co is to Marcos in the same month 12 years later. Actually much, much worse: Singson gave Estrada P600 million in jueteng and tobacco excise taxes, which is worth P1.5 billion today, 17 times the P25 billion Co delivered to Marcos.

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The post Zaldy fingers Marcos; Marcos fingers Zaldy… and Romualdez first appeared on Rigoberto Tiglao.

Zaldy fingers Marcos; Marcos fingers Zaldy… and Romualdez
Source: Breaking News PH