Malacañang’s blast shield

Malacañang’s blast shield | Daily Tribune

Zaldy Co releases one video and, almost instantly, the Senate shifts not toward inquiry but toward hasty dismissal. It is a curious and, frankly, highly suspicious response given the gravity of the allegations and the senior officials directly implicated.

You would think he had accused a barangay treasurer of stealing staplers. Instead, a frail-looking Co directly named President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as the one who ordered P100 billion in budget insertions for 2025, and in the same breath claimed it was also Marcos who ordered that he should stay abroad.

Add the former speaker and the President’s cousin, Martin Romualdez, plus key Cabinet officials like Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, and you would expect the Senate to at least stiffen at the implications. Instead, lawmakers slammed on the procedural brakes the moment the trail pointed to the Palace.

Sen. Ping Lacson, long known for poring over budget documents like a monk over ancient parchments, was the first to blunt Co’s statement. Because it was not made under oath, he said it had “no probative value.”

Okay, that is technically correct in the narrow, procedural sense because a statement is not considered evidence until it is made under oath. But it is also the kind of technicality one reaches for when something bigger is on the table.

Lacson insisted he was not defending the President. Yet moments later, he hastened to explain that Marcos would not need to order bicam insertions because the President already controls what goes into the National Expenditure Program.

The senator’s spiel was convenient, familiar, and almost identical to Secretary Pangandaman’s line. But whether it came from the DBM or the Senate, it did not respond to the allegation; it responded for the accused.

And whether Lacson meant to or not, he ended up sounding like someone doing early damage control for the Palace. This was even harder to ignore when several senators were themselves linked to the insertion scandal.

So, senators like Lacson and Win Gatchalian and, yes, the President’s sister Imee, shaking their heads at Co while pretending to stand on some moral high ledge, feels a bit like being lectured on sobriety by drunk people stumbling around in the dark.

For months, Co has been cast as the central figure in this flood control fiasco, the supposed mastermind of pork allocations. When someone is labeled the “poster boy” of a scandal, it is entirely rational that he would point upward.

That is how hierarchies work. Billions in public funds do not travel on their own. They require authorization, blessings, or at the very least a nod from someone far higher up than a lone partylist congressman.

Yet the Senate appeared more intent on discrediting the messenger than examining the message. Co’s absence, his medical stay abroad, and his outdated records.

All of this has become senatorial talking points: procedurally relevant but substantively evasive, especially when the allegation they are ignoring involves a sitting President allegedly ordering a P100-billion insertion.

If anything, the (feigned?) irritation over Co’s absence only highlights the Senate’s real discomfort. They want him in the room, not necessarily to listen to, but maybe to swat him down. Confront the man, yes, but avoid confronting the implications.

The public deserves better than a Senate that deploys its investigative instincts selectively. If they think Co is lying, then place him under oath, even abroad, and ask the hard questions.

The Senate is not designed to be Malacañang’s blast shield. When the President himself is named, the obligation is scrutiny, not retreat.

Co’s video may be inconvenient or explosive. But inconvenience is not a justification for silence, unless the goal is to protect someone rather than to uncover the truth.