EDITOR’S NOTE: This article includes mention of suicide. Those in distress may call the phone numbers listed at the end of the report. BAGUIO CITY—The mysterious death of former public works undersecretary Catalina Cabral has prompted growing concern over the handling of evidence by police and the transparency of the investigation. Cabral was discovered unconscious...
Tag: corruption
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Committed writing and the necessity of resistance
EDITOR’S NOTE: These remarks were delivered as a message from the family at the close of the 5th Edel Garcellano Conference with the theme “Resistance, Contradiction and Critique: Committed Writing Now,” held at the Ateneo de Manila University last Nov. 29. It’s extraordinary that the conference honoring Edel Garcellano and his work is now on...
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Budget reform advocates urge the bicam: Abolish unprogrammed appropriations
With the first-ever open bicameral conference (bicam) set to start on Dec. 13 to reconcile the Senate and House versions of the proposed ₱6.7-trillion national budget for 2026, reform advocates have one distinctive call: for the bicam members to abolish unprogrammed appropriations (UA) in the budget measure that have been the source of “insertions” and...
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‘Intense, stressful ICI work’ and family security concerns force Singson to resign
Rogelio “Babes” Singson has resigned as commissioner of the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) barely three months after his appointment, making him the second high-profile official to leave the panel amid mounting concerns about its mandate and power to look into the corruption scandal centered on the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). ICI...
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‘Allocable’ funds are the new pork barrel
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) builds bridges that connect people, streetlights that make roads safer, and classrooms that serve schoolchildren. In the agency’s words, it is their mission to bring about “a comfortable life for Filipinos through safe, reliable and resilient infrastructure.” But recent congressional investigations have exposed the true nature of...
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What’s taking so long, Bongbong?
The first strike was at the State of the Nation Address (Sona) last July, when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. appeared to be scolding the corrupt, blurting out so confidently, “Mahiya naman kayo!” only to be met with resounding applause and loud cheers by the people he was addressing. It was a curious moment, patently Pinoy...
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Lost lives, lost homes, lost livelihoods
One day in the 1990s after rivers of lahar streamed from the slopes of Mount Pinatubo and buried many homes in Pampanga, I was peering through a second-floor window below my eye level. The ground was warm beneath my sneakers as I stooped to look into a bedroom with a double bed and its tousled...
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Why foreign aid may do more harm than good
It’s an opportune time to take a look at two of the Philippines’ major foreign aid donors to highlight issues and problems that characterize official development assistance (ODA). These are the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japanese government. There have been excellent civil society studies as well as critical academic research work on the...
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Kabataan lawmaker says young Filipinos are ‘incredibly agitated’ by the theft of public funds and their future
For Kabataan Party-list Rep. Renee Louise Co, there was nothing performative in the halftime gig on Oct. 19 of the University of the Philippines (UP) Varsity Pep Squad and the De La Salle University (DLSU) Animo Squad in which they joined forces in assailing the massive corruption in flood control and other infrastructure projects. Co described...
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The government’s flood control projects are a systemic failure
A University of the Philippines (UP) study presented this conclusion after an examination of the havoc that flooding has wrought on the country’s infrastructure despite the humongous amounts of taxpayer money spent on flood control projects by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH). “Its flood control projects alone are supposed to abate damage,...