WHAT started as a simple inquiry into worsening floods as a result of the heavy and continuous monsoon rains in July turned into a tangled story of horror after horror – corrupt public officials, many of them elected, could pocket wholesale sums of public money meant for flood-control and other public works, and how all three branches of government – executive, legislative, and even constitutional bodies and the judiciary – have all along countenanced and even abetted graft and corruption what amounts to a grand conspiracy against the Filipino people.
But as the Tagalog proverb goes; “Kapag puno na ang salop, dapat na itong kalusin.” The ever patient Filipinos have their limits, and they have now become enraged and demanded accountability by all three branches of government.
Three UST system alumni were implicated: Sen. Joel Villanueva, Bulacan district engineer Henry Alcantara, and former House appropriations chair Zaldy Co. Villanueva was accused of demanding kickbacks. Co was pinpointed as the mastermind of “congressional insertions,” which inflated the government’s budget this year by P13 billion. Alcantara was linked to ghost and unfinished projects in Bulacan, the province with the most flood-control projects.
So unholy has been the alliance between lawmakers and contractors that the latter have sought more and more to enter public office. Zaldy Co in fact was a big-time contractor who formed his own party-list, Ako Bicol, and became a party-list representative and member of the House of Representatives and ended up leading the all-important appropriations committee, where government budget matters are decided.
Since then, the nation has seen the rise of congtractors, the vicious portmanteau of contractors becoming members of Congress.
Such is the case of Cezarah and Pacifico Discaya, the contracting couple – nine of whose firms, were listed among the Top 15 construction companies that bagged around 15% of all the flood control projects in the country for this fiscal year. The latter ran for mayor of Pasig, while the former was party-list nominee in the last election. Things would have been fine if it were not for their avarice to aim for political office, so that chasing media to earn publicity points and energize their campaign, flaunting their very luxurious lifestyle, including owning a fleet of some 40 luxury cars and admitting to buying a P33 million car just because it came with a free umbrella.
The Discayas were obviously following the example of Co, a big-time contractor who became party-list nominee of Ako Bicol, and entered Congress through the elections of 2019.
By skipping the traditional avenues for kickbacks, contractors-turned politicians changed the rules of the game, apparently all in their favor.
Co, Alcantara, Villanueva, and other Thomasians implicated in the anomalous flood control scheme should be ashamed. They have departed far from the ideals and values historically upheld by the University. As against the supposed values fostered by Thomasian education – competence, commitment, and compassion – they have flouted all rules and introduced and practiced their own three C’s – corruption, cruelty, and criminality.
They are corrupt, crass, cruel charlatans. Villanueva, Co, and Alcantara are a disgrace to UST.
The scandal underscores the split-level Christianity that has bedeviled Philippine society. Spending time in any Catholic or Christian institution – Villanueva and Alcantara finished Commerce and Engineering, respectively, in UST, Co took up his MBA at UST Legazpi, and the Discayas finished college at the Pasig Catholic College, is hardly an assurance that one will practice and uphold moral integrity in one’s profession, much less in public service.
“One who is not angry when there is a just cause for anger is immoral,” said St. Thomas Aquinas. And so it is understandable that widespread public outrage has greeted the highway robbery by these grafters and contractors. But anger alone is not enough – it must lead to action, change and an end to this culture of impunity. Otherwise, Filipinos will forever be submerged, not only in floods, but in the morass of corruption and debauchery.
