With heavy rainfall and flooding once again affecting communities, the public is being reminded of an unresolved question: After months of hearings, investigations, accusations and promises of accountability, who will actually answer for the flood-control projects that were paid for but never built, built somewhere else, or constructed below standard?
What explains the inability to finally exact accountability from erring former and current public officials involved in this corruption scheme? While many blame politics as the primary reason, equally important is the tendency of both legislators and investigators to over-fixate with budget insertions.
When the flood control controversy hearings resume, the discussion cannot afford to return to the same cycle of name-dropping, political accusation and fixation on who supposedly inserted which item in the budget. The more useful questions are more concrete: Which projects do not exist? Which projects were built below specification? Who procured them? Who implemented them? Who inspected and certified them? Who approved payment? Where did the money go?
This fixation with budget insertions continues to cripple investigations as law enforcement agencies continue to struggle to build and justify criminal charges against alleged personalities involved.
Budget records may provide leads. They are not, standing alone, proof of corruption. The physical project, the implementation record and the money trail are where proof is ultimately found.
Instead of fixating on budget insertions, investigators and law enforcement bodies should start shifting their focus from budget insertions into probes to fully identify the list of all ghost flood control projects present across the country. Turning attention toward these ghost flood control projects is a better approach since these projects are easier to prove. In addition, it will expedite the prosecution of erring government officials behind these specific cases of ghost flood projects.
There were too many fact-finding bodies involved, each with its own mandates and standards. The proliferation of bodies was not necessarily the problem. The problem was the failure to reconcile their findings into one reliable project-level record.
Some projects initially branded as “ghost” were later found to exist. Testimonies were repeated across hearings without necessarily being independently corroborated. Lists, affidavits, technical findings, and political claims were often treated as if they carried the same evidentiary weight.
The fact-finding bodies shared the same approach: focusing on budget insertions supposedly made by Senators and members of the House of Representatives, as an act reflecting connivance among these legislators, DPWH officials, and private contractors to steal public funds from the national treasury.
The phrase “budget insertion” gradually became synonymous with theft or corruption. Once a project was described as an insertion, the lawmaker associated with the district or amendment was treated as presumptively involved in corruption.
That is unfortunately an incomplete understanding of the budget process.
A budget entry shows that money was authorized for a stated purpose. It does not establish that the project was procured honestly, constructed according to plan, correctly inspected, or paid without kickbacks. That requires a project-by-project investigation.
The investigations have produced their most defensible results when authorities have moved away from general labels and validated individual projects.
In January, the DOJ reported that only 14 of the 421 flood control projects initially flagged as ghost had, at that point, been confirmed as truly non-existent. It said it was not yet convinced that the other projects were actually ghost projects and called for continued evidence-gathering. On the other hand, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Philippine National Police (PNP) uncovered 252 non-existent projects over the reported 400-plus projects.
One of the responsible government agencies in identifying and accounting for the total number of ghost projects in the country is the Department of Public Works and Highways. However, we have yet to see a full account or inventory of this agency’s identified ghost flood control projects implemented across the country. As a result, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee was presented with contradictory data that deepened the confusion among investigating lawmakers.
Such fixation on budget insertions is further aggravated by politics, as the opposition relied on inadmissible testimony from Zaldy Co, his ex-bodyguards and even uncorroborated revelations from Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste. At the end of the day, government officials continue to bark at the wrong tree instead of looking for other tangible and concrete indicators to finally settle this contentious issue.
The latest development involving former Public Works secretary Manuel Bonoan makes the need for a project-based accountability framework even more urgent.
The Office of the Ombudsman has explained that Bonoan’s institutional and firsthand knowledge is needed to penetrate the alleged scheme and strengthen cases against other officials, including former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
Using an insider as a state witness can be a legitimate prosecutorial strategy. It nevertheless creates an apparent accountability inversion.
Bonoan was the head of the principal agency responsible for planning, procuring, implementing, inspecting, and paying for national flood-control projects. If he possessed direct knowledge of a corruption scheme, the public is entitled to know what he approved, tolerated, concealed, or failed to prevent. His cooperation may assist the prosecution of others, but cooperation should not erase the need to establish his own role.
The more troubling message would be that the head of the implementing agency can be repositioned primarily as a witness, while officials outside the implementation chain are pursued as principals, largely based on their positions in the budget process.
Budget insertions do not provide a clear picture or solid evidence. A better alternative is to identify the locations of ghost projects and the government officials behind their implementation. These missing infrastructure projects are concrete pieces of evidence that can potentially prove the guilt and liability of government officials.
The former speaker is one useful example of why this distinction matters, although he should not be treated as a special case.
Romualdez was speaker during the relevant budget deliberations. His office, influence, district allocations and any allegations against him are, on their face, proper subjects of investigation. However, no ghost or substandard flood control project has so far been publicly identified or officially validated in Tacloban City or Leyte’s First District where he has been the representative for many years. Romualdez has publicly stated that his district has zero ghost and zero substandard flood control projects and has challenged authorities to verify and release the relevant records.
If Romualdez is alleged to have masterminded a nationwide flood control scheme, investigators should be able to identify the projects through which said scheme operated, the contractors and DPWH officials involved, the fraudulent certifications and payments, and even the proceeds allegedly received by him.
If those projects and transactions exist, they should be presented. If they cannot be identified, his former position as speaker and his participation in budget deliberations cannot fill the evidentiary gap.
This same standard must apply to every legislator and political faction. Investigators should start from the beginning of the actual evidentiary chain: inspect the projects and follow the resulting evidence.
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