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...
Tag: corruption
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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,...
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Cooperatives sector seeks ‘real, not selective’ accountability and jail time for corrupt parties
Every guilty party in the corruption scandal, including politicians, other government officials, and contractors, must be prosecuted and jailed, according to the millions-strong National Union of Cooperatives (NUC). The NUC made the call for urgent reforms and accountability as public outrage continues to grow over anomalies in the government’s multibillion-peso flood control and other infrastructure...
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To demand the facts and make correct sense of the corruption scandal
So much stuff to process, so little time before the next explosive detail erupts. Filipinos are called upon to make correct sense of the corruption scandal now approaching crisis proportions. That means educating themselves in how the plunder of taxpayer money was pulled off in flood control and other infra projects, and by whom, and...