Dead dame tells no tales

Dead dame tells no tales | Daily Tribune

A recent visit by Batangas Rep. Lean Leviste to the DAILY TRIBUNE office provided insight into the intricate system that was created by the controversial former Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Undersecretary Cathy Cabral, who has died under questionable circumstances.

The “allocable” scheme, which reserves space for pet projects in the DPWH budget and which was devised by Cabral with the collusion of Department of Budget and Management officials, has been a standard feature of the General Appropriations Act (GAA) since 2023.

Leviste said that under the Cabral system, empty slots in the DPWH budget offered to legislators reached P401 billion in the last two budgets.

Thus, the system may have been employed in the 2025 Bicameral Conference Committee report exposed by Davao City Representative Sid Ungab, in which several blank items were initially found and later filled in.

Cabral possessed documents detailing the proponents of DPWH projects under the scheme.

“Outside of the allocables, there are other pet projects that are parked in congressmen’s districts,” Leviste revealed.

In the non-allocable portion, there is the so-called leadership fund, where requests from representatives and senators for infrastructure projects are consolidated and incorporated directly into the National Expenditure Program (NEP), the executive branch’s proposed budget, before it is submitted to Congress.

At a September 2025 Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing, former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan confirmed the existence of the leadership fund.

It enables lawmakers to “insert” or prioritize their pet projects early in the NEP, from which kickbacks of from five to 25 percent are obtained. It is separate from the allocable funds that are distributed per congressional district.

The leadership fund is embedded in larger infrastructure allocations and does not exist as a line item.

Leviste said the files that Cabral held “can tell you who decided what projects are in the leadership fund.”

The Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) is aware that Cabral held the vital documents that could pinpoint project proponents, including for ghost projects and the intricate network that facilitated the trillions of pesos worth of irregularities in the DPWH in the past three years.

Senator Ping Lacson said that, prior to her death, Cabral indicated a willingness to cooperate in the “Floodgate” scandal investigations.

Former DPWH undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, who is the primary whistleblower in the corruption scandal, testified in the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee that Cabral would have a more extensive knowledge of the network of crooks in government and their associates.

Leviste, who is rising as a staunch crusader against irregularities in government, said he had repeatedly sought an explanation from Cabral for the inequity in the distribution of projects, where places with smaller populations were receiving billions of pesos in allocations.

“It’s something that I took an interest in from a general policy perspective, but also one that affects my district and every congressman’s district because I think people are just shy to ask, but I think it is a question that needs to be asked: who decides that one district gets P5 billion and another district gets P1 billion,” Leviste said.

The allocable system was the new form of pork barrel that Cabral devised and only she could tell the public on whose orders the vehicle was designed to reintroduce the pork barrel in the budget.

The allocables were a workaround to the 2013 Supreme Court ban on the post-enactment insertion of projects, which was a provision in the High Tribunal’s ruling that the Priority Development Assistance Fund ttbreached the Constitution.

Cabral would have provided the missing pieces of the puzzle that would have led to her mentors and principals, but now she’s dead.