A convenor of the anti-corruption mass demonstration mounted at the Luneta and the EDSA Shrine on 21 September, De La Salle University professor David San Juan, is asking President Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte to explain the donations of contractors to their election campaign in 2022.

Specifically, San Juan is asking why only Senator Francis Escudero was asked by the Commission on Elections to explain the P30 million donation to his 2022 senatorial campaign by Lawrence R. Lubiano, president of Centerways Construction and Development.

With a flood control contract worth P5.16 billion, Lubiano’s company ranked seventh in the list of contractors with the most government contracts as revealed by the President.

As it turns out, not only Escudero but the President and the Vice President too were found to have accepted campaign donations from contractors who had government projects.

For instance, Rodulfo D. Hilot Jr., owner of Rudhil Construction and Enterprises Inc. in Zamboanga del Sur, donated P20 million to Marcos’ 2022 presidential campaign.

Hilot’s company bagged P2.7-billion worth of contracts for infrastructure projects within a year after the elections. In 2024, the value of the contracts awarded to his company had grown by P1 billion, to P3.5 billion.

Meanwhile, another contractor who had given P1 million to the campaign of Marcos — Quirante Construction Corp. owner Jonathan M. Quirante — saw his post-2022 election contracts soar to P3 billion in 2023.

For her part, VP Sara Duterte accepted nearly P20 million worth of political ads from construction magnate Glenn Escandor’s Esdevco Realty Corporation during her vice presidential run in 2022.

Another company of Escandor’s — Genesis88 Construction Inc. — had numerous government contracts during the administration of the VP’s father, former president Rodrigo Duterte.

Friendship with poll victors, it would seem, could rake in very lucrative government contracts for contractors, as in Escandor’s case.

Rodrigo Duterte, after he became president, made Escandor his sports adviser. Subsequently, findings by investigative media revealed Escandor’s Genesis88 obtained public works contracts that, by the end of Duterte’s term in 2022, were worth nearly P2 billion.

Media research into campaign contributions during the 2022 presidential election revealed that the Marcos Jr. campaign received more than P600 million from nearly 70 donors, most of them big businessmen-friends of his late father.

Top donors included the family of Marcos Jr.’s Special Presidential Assistant, Anton Lagdameo Jr., whose mother, Linda, is the eldest child of banana magnate and close Marcos Sr. ally, the late Antonio Floirendo Sr. The Floirendo family owns the 6,640-hectare Tadeco banana plantation in Davao del Norte.

Total contributions by Lagdameo Jr., who was treasurer of Marcos Jr.’s Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, was pegged at close to a quarter of a billion pesos in kind.

Floirendo Sr. had also been a major funder of Marcos Sr.’s presidential campaigns in 1965 and 1969. His son, former Rep. Antonio “Tonyboy” Floirendo Jr., was among the top donors — some P75 million — to Rodrigo Duterte’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Others in the list of individual donors to Marcos Jr.’s campaign included Melquiades A. Robles (P30 million) who was the Light Rail Transit Authority administrator in the Arroyo administration. When he became president, Marcos Jr. made Robles head of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office.

Also listed as individual donors to the Marcos Jr. campaign were brothers Norman Vincent Lee Wee and Francis Augustus Lee Wee, president and CEO, respectively, of the family’s W Group Inc. (food, aquaculture, real estate) who reportedly gave P20 million each. Their father, Lee Hiong Tan Wee, who chairs W Group, was Rodrigo Duterte’s ambassador to Indonesia.

The truth is electoral candidates are prevented by the Omnibus Election Code from receiving donations from persons with government contracts. But there’s a loophole, one that allows a person to give money, a bribe, if you will, to someone running for office without breaking the law: give, and pass it off as his own personal — and not his company’s — funds. Neat, no?

We’ll wager that is how Senator Escudero will explain away the P30 million his friend, Lubiano, contributed to his campaign. And we won’t be surprised if that’ll be what the President and the Vice President will likewise do.

Corruption, in a package, neatly wrapped and handed over to the candidate-recipients, with impunity.