On the day Congress came one step away from approving the proposed “corruption-free” ₱6.793-trillion national budget for 2026, a former official of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) being investigated in connection with the anomalous multibillion-peso flood control projects fell to her death from Kennon Road in Tuba, Benguet.
The body of former public works undersecretary Catalina Cabral was retrieved below the highway hours after she told her driver to stop at an area in Camp 5, on Kennon at 3 p.m., Thursday, according to a report by the Benguet Provincial Police Office.
Per the account of the driver, Ricardo Hernandez, to police, they were traveling along Kennon from Baguio City towards La Union when Cabral told him to stop at the highway and leave her there. He went to a nearby gas station and then returned at 5 p.m. to where he had left her, but could not find her. He then drove to the Ion Hotel in Baguio where Cabral had earlier checked in, thinking that she was there, but did not see her.
Hernandez told police he then returned to the spot where he had left Cabral, to no avail, and finally sought help from the Baguio City Police Office.
Baguio police proceeded to the area and found Cabral at the side of the Bued River, “more or less 20 to 30 meters below the highway.” She was described as “unconscious and unresponsive.”
Cabral was declared dead a little past midnight on Friday.
At a press conference later on Friday, Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla said authorities will conduct an autopsy and DNA test “to make sure it’s really [Cabral].”
Remulla said that while Cabral’s family had positively identified her body, authorities wanted to ascertain that it was not “budol play,” or a pretense.
Cabral’s husband, engineer Cesar Cabral, said Friday that the family would not allow an autopsy as they believe her death was an accident.
‘Principal architects’
Remulla described Cabral and Roberto Bernardo, also a former public works undersecretary, as the “principal architects of the flood control scam.”
During the Senate blue ribbon committee’s hearings on the flood control corruption scandal, Bernardo claimed that lawmakers took cuts from allocations intended for infrastructure projects and that their “commitments” or kickbacks ranged from 15% to 23% of the budget of specific projects. He also claimed that he and Cabral, who was in charge of the submission of the list of DPWH projects, had received a percentage from these kickbacks.
Cabral had denied wrongdoing.
Remulla said: “Let me be clear. The death of a person doesn’t mean the wheels of justice will stop. We will go after all ill-gotten wealth from a person, alive or dead.
“To the accused, please think about it. Death will not protect you. Death will bring greater shame to your family. So face up to the charges, man up to the charges, answer the charges. Have faith in the judicial system.”
Budget ‘responsive to the people’
Early on Thursday, after six days of sometimes testy deliberations, the Senate and House panels of the bicameral conference committee (bicam) reconciled contentious issues in the proposed ₱6.793-trillion national budget, paving the way for its passage in Congress.
The bicam leaders, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian and Nueva Ecija (1st district) Rep. Mikaela Angela Suansing, said the reconciled budget measure is “responsive to the people” and its deliberations were “historic for being livestreamed to the public.”
“We have a budget that we can be proud of… [It’s] corruption-free and most of all, there are no overpriced items, and it is a budget that I can say is a standard for transparency,” Gatchalian said on the last day of the bicam meeting that lasted nine hours.
Suansing said the bicam held lengthy discussions “because we want a clean, transparent budget.”
The bicam’s deliberations were livestreamed to the public to ease fears that the measure would be riddled with pork barrel insertions.
Groups enraged by the way billions of pesos in flood control funds ended up in the hands of corrupt officials, contractors, and lawmakers have been holding protest rallies and marches across the country.
It is the biggest corruption scandal to hit the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who ironically disclosed the existence of ghost or substandard flood control projects nationwide and the contractors who have been cornering billion-peso government projects.
The bicam deliberations ended two days before Congress was to adjourn its session for the Christmas holiday break. Lawmakers are looking to ratify the budget measure in their respective chambers on Dec. 29 and then submit it to the President for his signature.
It was on the last day of the bicam meeting that it was able to discuss and agree on the proposed DPWH budget for 2026 after a brief impasse.
DPWH’s ₱45-billion cut
The impasse resulted from Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon’s bid to have the bicam restore the senators’ ₱45-billion cut on the DPWH budget, which reflected on the Senate’s budget bill that was passed on third reading.
Sen. Loren Legarda was particularly miffed that Dizon wanted the amount restored. She recalled that Dizon had told them construction materials and equipment for roads, bridges, and multipurpose halls were overpriced, anyway. For instance, she pointed out, Dizon had said the cost of asphalt was overpriced by 30% to 68%.
For the first time, the bicam called on a department secretary — in this case, Dizon — to appear before the panel. Dizon explained that he was seeking the restoration of the ₱45 billion deducted from the DPWH budget after the President instructed him to lower the costs of construction materials such as cement, gravel, sand, and steel, among others. He said it “was never done before.”
Dizon said the updated Construction Materials Price Data (CMPD) reflected lower prices to match the market price and prevent overpricing.
He said that using the old data they provided the Senate and the House, which would result in an across-the-board reduction of prices, may affect some 10,000 projects and make these unimplementable.
In the end, the bicam members set the DPWH budget at P529 billion, lower than the P881 billion originally proposed in Mr. Marcos’ National Expenditure Program (NEP).
Using the updated CPMD supplied by the DPWH for the 10,000 projects, the bicam also generated P20.77 billion in savings, of which, according to Gatchalian and Suansing, ₱16.5 billion will be allocated to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth), and ₱4.2 billion will go to the fund of the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management.
DOTr, DA
Legarda and other bicam members also questioned the late adjustment requests made by the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and Department of Agriculture (DA) regarding their projects for 2026.
Legarda said she was “disappointed” and “exasperated” that the two departments would go to the bicam to make changes when they could have done so at the level of the NEP.
“There has to be some discipline in government,” she said. “In school, we are told that finished or not finished, we have to pass our papers so that the teacher can grade them. You just can’t make changes. How can we be a good example to people if you make these changes in the bicam?”
The bicam approved the request of Acting Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez to cut ₱1.8 billion from the Metro Manila Subway Phase 1 and ₱1.8 billion from the North-South Commuter Railway System to fund the Light Rail Transit Line1-Cavite extension Unified Grand Central Station, and the automated fare collection system for all the railways.
On the DA issue, the bicam agreed on Dec. 13 to fund ₱33 billion for the repair, rehabilitation, and construction of farm-to-market roads (FMRs) across the country. But senators flagged P8 billion worth of FMRs from the ₱33 billion already approved but were resubmitted, lacking coordinates.
At the bicam meeting on Dec.15, Sen. Francis Pangilinan said Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu Laurel wrote a letter to the lawmakers saying that the earlier P8 billion worth of FMRs did not have his approval, as these were submitted when he was on medical leave.
Pangilinan said the new FMRs had coordinates that they did not request from the start.
In the end, the bicam approved the new list of FMR projects that Laurel requested.
Read more: Budget reform advocates urge the bicam: Abolish unprogrammed appropriations
