By TONY LOPEZ
On August 23, 2025, I wrote: “It’s the biggest syndicated looting of the treasury – the plunder of P1 trillion of the P2-trillion flood control money in the last 15 years (2011 to 2025). Of the P2 trillion, over P1 trillion, 53%, came during 2023 to 2025, the first three years of the current presidency.”
That’s P1 billion a day of looting.
“The larceny is so crude, brazen, premeditated, massive and excessive one wonders why people, with every weapon of mass protest at their command, are not even out in the streets – to demand accountability, punishment, retribution, karma or even revenge – physical, legal, moral and spiritual. Why? Have our people been so inured to such scale of corruption – petty, primordial or spectacular – as to suffer in silence and quiet indifference? Where is the Catholic Church, for centuries the symbol of the true, good, moral and spiritual? Where is civil society?”
On Sept. 4, I wrote: “Slow, sputtering and spineless has been the response of the business community, the Catholic Church, the civil society, the academic community, the students and the professions in terms of outrage and action against the biggest looting of the treasury this century.”
The systematic stealing was done by top and low-ranking officials of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); by greedy, corrupt and incompetent private contractors; by their cohorts in the Senate and in the House, and by other government people.
The lost P1 trillion could have rescued five million Filipinos from poverty. P1 trillion is also 2.3x the P440 billion needed by DepEd to solve the classroom shortage, 165,000 units.
In Nepal, the scale of corruption is the same as ours in amount—P1 trillion. That’s Nepal’s total corruption. In our case, the P1 trillion is ONLY for flood control plunder.
Yet in Nepal, a people’s revolution erupted Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. By Thursday, Sept. 10, the government had fallen; many officials in hiding.
Nepal’s rage
BBC reported: “Protests against corruption spiraled into arson and violence on Tuesday (Sept. 2). The prime minister quit as politicians’ homes were vandalized, and government buildings and parliament torched. Thirty people died and more than 1,000 were injured over two days of violence.” The wife of an ex-PM was burned to death.
Supporters of ex-PM Prachanda (swept into power by Maoists in 2008) mobbed him and rained blows down onto his head and face.
Prachanda is Nepal’s third senior politician to be assaulted by mobs mad at corruption.
Reports NDTV: In January last year, a 55-year-old man slapped the chairman of the opposition Unified Marxist Leninist party at an event for new members.
In May, a Kathmandu tea shop owner hit a Maoist lawmaker across the face, saying the country’s political leaders had “betrayed the people”.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian people’s revolt began on Aug. 25, 2025 after 580 congressmen gave themselves a housing allowance of $3,000 a month or $100 a day.
Indonesians went on a rampage burning government buildings, including the parliament; and burning houses of politicians. President Prabowo revamped his cabinet, ousting five cabinet members, including his technocrat finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, previously an executive director of the IMF and managing director of the World Bank.
Congressmen make P203M yearly
In Indonesia, congressmen make P39 million a year. Nearly all are now in fear. In the Philippines, congressmen make a minimum of P200 million each, as pork, plus P3 million of basic salary.
That’s P61 billion literally down the drain yearly. Some senators make P2 billion a year. Yet, our solons strut like pompous peacocks.
One billion pesos ($17 million) is stolen a DAY at DPWH by its top officials, engineers and cashiers.
So far, DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan has been ousted; airports on the lookout for his possible escape, to prevent a repetition of what a now notorious congressman heavily involved in flood control corruption, Zaldy Co, did. Co, a huge flood control contractor with a number botched and ghost flood control projects nationwide, is said to be in the US.
Senator Panfilo Lacson now heads the Senate Blue Ribbon anti-graft committee. He wants to get to the bottom of the P1 trillion flood control scam. He hopes the Nepal and Indonesian rage will not spill over into the Philippines.
Secretary Vince Dizon has filed anti-graft and malversation charges against 18 DPWH Bulacan first district engineering office, including nine engineers led by Henry C. Alcantara and Brice Hernandez, their bosses.
Also sued: the owners/officers of four contractor companies, namely: St. Timothy Construction (Ma. Roma Angeline Discaya Rimando and Cezarah Discaya); SYMS Construction Trading (Sally N. Santos); Wawao Builders (Mark Allan V. Arevalo); and IM Construction Corp. (Robert T. Imperio).
The charges stemmed from ghost or uncompleted flood control projects. Timothy was charged for ghost or incomplete river protection projects in Calumpit, Bulacan worth P135.69 million—P96.498 million paid in Brgy. Bulusan for work worth only P58 million; and P39.192 million paid for a defective flood control in Palimbang, Calumpit.
Vince says that since the amounts exceed P8.8 million, the crime is non-bailable.
The Discayas could rot in jail. Vince may yet achieve what a so-called independent commission will take time to do—quell a raging people’s rebellion.