‘…while I personally have doubts that the Senate can conduct a thorough inquiry into these floodwater control plunder projects, I also feel that it is a unique chance for the Senate – at least as an institution- to redeem itself.’
THE past few weeks since the State of the Nation Address have not been good for the Senate of the Philippines.
The decision of the President to come out very publicly and expose anomalies in multi-billion-peso flood water projects has sent the Upper Chamber reeling. Whether he intended it to be this way or not, the President’s exposé of plunder-level anomalies has shaken the country as a whole and the legislature in particular, with the Senate itself greatly put on the defensive. Why? Because the revelations have led to the opening of one can of worms after another, cans of worms which, it seems, had been buried by members of the Senate who may have hoped they would remain buried.
One of these was the budget deletions and insertions that became a big issue early in the year, with the Lower House bearing the brunt of the blame. The issue was that certain critical government agencies and programs saw their budget allocations drastically reduced or removed outright – the DepEd was one glaring example. For these, the Speaker of the House was subjected to heaps of scorn from the public, especially netizens!
Turns out that the House wasn’t really at fault because the deletions and insertions happened during the bicameral conference. This is where delegations from the House and Senate meet to reconcile their budget versions in order to come up with the General Appropriations Act for the year.
One House leader, Cong. Ronaldo Puno, points out that it was the Senate delegation that reduced the allocations for PhilHealth and the DepEd to transfer them to the DPWH.
Ahhh… the DPWH.
Even before the ink had dried on front-page stories regarding the presidential exposé, Sen. Joel Villanueva already issued a statement saying he had not seen any evidence that any of the senators were involved. Unfortunate. Because it turns out that he and Senate President Chiz Escudero had received campaign donations in 2022 from the owner (or was it the son) of one of the contractors identified by the President as having been favored with contracts for flood water control projects.
The Senate President had reported the campaign donations in 2022.
I don’t know who is advising Sen. Joel, but he didn’t stop there; when his province of Bulacan was identified as the biggest recipient of questionable floodwater project funds, he again made a statement saying he didn’t know any of those involved and was even open to imposing the death penalty on them. In response to this statement, video clips were shared on the net showing Sen. Joel with the former Bulacan district engineer, who is at the center of the controversy.
It turns out that construction firms owned by relatives of another senator, Christopher “Bong” Go, were recipients of some of these project funds. Go was quick to distance himself from his kin, saying he would even be the first to have his kin jailed if proven to have violated the law.
A funny aside happened when Sen. Bato dela Rosa was quizzing one contractor, demanding to know when they began their floodwater projects with the DPWH. The good Senator was left momentarily speechless when she said “2016 Po” twice. Let us not forget that in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was President and now-Sen. Mark Villar was the DPWH Secretary.
Did Sen. Bato just open another can of worms?
Point is, while I personally have doubts that the Senate can conduct a thorough inquiry into these floodwater control plunder projects, I also feel that it is a unique chance for the Senate – at least as an institution- to redeem itself.
But to do so, it may have to break the institutionalized practices of treating one of its own with kid gloves.
