Corruption’s center of gravity

The bicameral conference committee (bicam) is considered the vortex of the budget scandal and the flood control scam, which are interlinked through the insertions that are meant to be pork barrel funds.

In both issues, Senate President Chiz Escudero has addressed the allegations of his involvement in a taciturn way. A Congress insider said that maybe the Senate chief “just doesn’t want people to discover where the billions are flowing — or if he plans to insert again.”

Escudero admitted that one of his campaign donors, also a friend of his, secured major flood control projects in Bicol. With such an admission, the logical next question is how many more of his friends and donors got lucrative government contracts?

Sorsogon, Escudero’s province, received P52 billion worth of road projects in the 2025 budget. This was achieved through a P142.7 billion insertion.

A distinct character of the projects in the province is their being split into 912 separate projects involving construction, rehabilitation, slope protection and bypass roads, with 164 of these funded at exactly P100 million each.

The amount signifies an attempt to evade the P150 million threshold for projects to be subject to a regional auction. Under the bid rules of the Department of Public Works and Highways, the bidding for projects costing under P150 million can be undertaken by district engineers.

Other huge budget allocations were allotted for buildings, P38.7 billion; flood control, P35.1 billion; street lighting, P11.1 billion; bridges, P3.8 billion; miscellaneous including water system, airport upgrade and laboratory equipment, P1.3 billion.

As Senate President, Escudero ordered the removal of PhilHealth subsidies from the bicam report.

From full funding to zero, the original budget had P74.431 billion for PhilHealth, but this was deleted to divert funds into his own pork barrel projects.

Escudero’s excuse then was that PhilHealth’s subsidy was removed to penalize the implementor of the Universal Healthcare (UHC) program for its inefficiency.