Some ‘5,500 completed, overwhelmed, economic sabotage’

To call a spade a spade, recall quickly how FM Jr. himself in a past State of the Nation Address showboated the completion of 5,500 flood control projects, confirming their existence. Except he’s just been “overwhelmed,” finally realizing on ocular inspection of a “ghost project” there was nothing there whatsoever (“wala kahit ano”), in disappointment, pointing to a case of economic sabotage.

The matter at bar is a case of hundreds of billions of hard-earned taxpayer monies siphoned off to line pockets of politicians, contractors, public officials, engineers, suppliers, procurement officers — as if to rightly partake of a king’s largesse.

Pray tell, is the President free — if not immune — of blame, completely out of the loop and the larger net of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance that should by any degree find its way to the doorstep of Malacañang? In the unseen process, however late in the day, he resembles the “Naked Emperor.” The floods that destroyed lives, homes, crops, flood control structures rather providentially proved FM Jr.’s claim, nay belief, of completed projects to be a monumental lie.

Accountability in its broadest sense cannot save him from any blame, matter-of-factly.

Should he consult too long before terminating the services of the public works secretary if the latter does not tender his resignation as a matter of elementary decency or delicadeza? Or is the President’s stern warning, viz., “mahiya naman kayo,” a mere case of “to whom it may concern?” Disappointingly, the secretary’s wrong answer when quizzed by the chair of the Blue Ribbon Committee should have cast serious doubt on his being in charge of the disbursement of humongous public funds.

Indisputably, the Senate panel probing the anomalous flood control projects proceeded from FM Jr.’s naming of 15 contractors that largely cornered contracts from the P100 billion flood control program since July 2022. Still, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee described its inquiry as motu proprio when it commenced its first organizational meeting. Less than half of the invited resource persons attended, however.

Congressional inquiries are always premised to be “in aid of legislation.” But it was not as if the heretofore Senate panel probe was the first time; there were earlier privilege speeches, committee and public hearings, press conferences and press releases centering around this corruption issue. The inherent danger of putting the cart before the horse occurs in over-fixating every blame on the private contractors rather than on the politicians involved, who benefited from kickbacks, commissions, bribes, and royalties.

As the President’s sister rightly observed, nine of the 15 contractors were lending out their licenses for a fee, and their business plans were alien to flood control, leading her to invoke “piercing the corporate veil of legal fiction.” However, since it was the President himself who made the public disclosure, the wherewithal to address it is well within his “command-and-control.”

One compelling recourse is to terminate the services of the public works secretary, given the enormity of the corruption that has infested the line department he is in charge of, without prejudice to the filing of appropriate charges or sanctions against him if warranted. The first and final milestone in administrative history that triggers the most contingent adoption of the notion of “whole-of-society approach” would be what results from the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee probe, provided it “muddles through.”

In public administration, muddling through means disjointed incrementalism, a policy-making approach where decisions are made incrementally via small adjustments and comparisons to existing policies or parameters, rather than through a comprehensive, rational, and ideal-seeking process. Advanced by Charles Lindblom, this doable method recognizes the complexity and constraints of public policy issues — “allowing gradual changes, testing of solutions, and adjustments based on feedback” --- hence more piecemeal than utopian.

Else, the committee system is under siege since, pejoratively, it’s where the crime scene, the crime, the criminals are. Sadly, we have a Congress with a deficit in undertaking “backward mapping.”