Hubris, a disease

Hubris, a disease | Daily Tribune

The arrogance to believe the current administration tolerates wholesale corruption and shields its political allies may yet be the Waterloo of the bloodsuckers feeding on the annual budget.

The P142-billion in insertions made to the 2025 national budget purportedly in the bicameral conference committee with Senate President Chiz Escudero as the mastermind overlap the chart President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. presented in which 15 contractor-cronies of members of Congress cornered P100 billion worth of flood control projects since 2022.

The parallel lies with the regions that received large insertions, which were Bulacan and Sorsogon, and the areas that were flagged for anomalous projects, which suggested a systemic collusion among members of Congress to generate pork barrel funds.

Escudero has admitted receiving P30 million for his 2022 campaign from his longtime friend, Lawrence Lubiano, who owns Centerways Construction and Development Inc. which was number seven in the Marcos list of flood control contractors.

Centerways secured P5.1 billion in projects, despite having only P45 million in paid-up capital.

The Senate chief insisted he did not influence the awarding of the project to Centerways. Still, Commission on Elections (Comelec) rules prohibit donations by government contractors.

Similarly, the large insertions and number of projects allocated to Bulacan, the turf of Senator Joel Villanueva, suggested favoritism tied to political alliances.

Pork projects inserted during the bicam had vague descriptions. The absence of a clear paper trail was a common characteristic of the flood control deals, which were signed by the contractors and Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials, despite the members of Congress being the proponents and taking the biggest slice of the kickback pie.

For instance, a 20-percent insertion of P9 billion for Sorsogon would equate to P1.8 billion to the proponent, and a 20-percent insertion of P12 billion for Bulacan would result in a commission of P2.4 billion.

Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong and Senator Ping Lacson agreed on an estimate of 20 to 25-percent of the project cost going to the sponsors in Congress.

The ongoing Senate Blue Ribbon probe and that of the Commission on Audit are expected to establish the connection between contractors and politicians.

The opaqueness of the bicam process and the method of inserting the pork projects were aimed at obscuring the trail of the excessive and scandalous allocations, with Escudero being pointed to as playing a leading role in the “small bicam” meetings where the adjustments were sealed.

The lack of detailed documentation makes it difficult to verify the necessity of and to track the source of the budget items, and the responsibility will likely fall on the contractors and the DPWH officials whose signatures were found in the contracts — which would shield the legislators.

The huge insertions must be questioned even as Congress again debates the proposed P6.793-trillion national budget for next year.

What takes the cake is that the mind-blowing sums were added without a public debate, especially when the health and education budgets were reduced to make room for the lawmakers’ insertions.

The height of hubris is that elected members of Congress openly admitted to accepting money from contractors, yet expect to walk away unscathed by exploiting a loophole in the Omnibus Election Code on private donations.

Greed blinds the sense of integrity, born of the callousness it creates.