Clean up starts?
Cabral was implicated in the scandal primarily through the testimony of former DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo during a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on 14 November.
Daily TribuneCabral was implicated in the scandal primarily through the testimony of former DPWH Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo during a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on 14 November.
The mystery behind the death of former Department of Public Works and Highways Undersecretary Maria Catalina Cabral is the stuff of whodunit Alfred Hitchcock movies, with among the possibilities that she was silenced.
According to her driver, at around 3 p.m. on Thursday, Cabral alighted from her car in the Maramal area, Camp 5, on Kennon Road, and asked to be left alone.
The driver returned around 5 p.m. but could not find her, prompting a police search.
She was found at around 8 p.m. at the bottom of a ravine, retrieved with assistance from rescue teams, and declared dead.
The DPWH official was suspected of playing a key role in facilitating anomalous budget insertions for flood control projects, including kickbacks and ghost projects.
She appeared at a Senate inquiry earlier but did not attend, or confirm her attendance, at an Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) hearing on 15 December.
Cabral was implicated in the scandal primarily through the testimony of former DPWH undersecretary Roberto Bernardo during a Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on 14 November.
Bernardo’s allegations included the claim that Cabral was responsible for setting the DPWH “allocables” budget in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) from 2023 to 2025.
Cabral allegedly set aside a significant portion of the funds for projects chosen by her and former Public Works Secretary Manuel Bonoan, while presenting the budget as fully allocated.
She also allegedly met with legislators to inform them of their budget allocations and to request that project items be included in the DPWH budget.
Based on Bernardo’s testimony, she was responsible for apportioning the “allocables” in the DPWH budget for 2023 to 2025 under the NEP (the President’s budget), suggesting a collusion with officials of the Department of Budget and Management.
Allocables are a workaround to the 2013 Supreme Court ruling that declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), commonly known as the congressional pork barrel, unconstitutional.
The ruling held that the PDAF violated the separation of powers by allowing legislators to identify, fund, and intervene in project implementations after the enactment of the General Appropriations Act (GAA), which is an executive function.
It also undermined the President’s veto power, diluted congressional oversight, and subverted local autonomy by enabling national lawmakers to encroach on regional affairs.
Allocables are thus essential to ensure compliance with the 2013 SC decision, which bars post-enactment requests.
The anomalous flood control projects were all included in the budget over the past three years under the allocable scheme.
Bernardo claimed that Cabral supervised a system for collecting kickbacks from government contracts.
She had the authority to add, remove, and modify budget items and would meet with legislators to allocate funds and request project titles for inclusion.
Allocables open up space for discretionary funds distributed to congressional districts, seen as a modern form of the pork barrel.
These are apportioned within the DPWH’s proposed budget before final submission to the DBM.
From 2023 to 2025, allocables totaled approximately P1.2 trillion in the DPWH budget.
Overseeing the distribution of such a massive amount over the years made her an influential figure and a key to the trail that inevitably leads to influential figures in Congress and the Palace.
The pork projects were included in the budget by the Budget Secretary, and the General Appropriations Act containing them was signed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Figure the maths.