Before the budget debates even start

Just when you think the flood control scandal has shown you all its angles, a new one emerges. 

Recent reports on the so-called “DPWH leaks” suggest that as early as the 2020 budget, 16 line items worth roughly one billion pesos were already quietly included in the National Expenditure Program, allegedly at the behest and for the benefit of then Davao City mayor Sara Duterte. Those were not last-minute insertions during the congressional horse trading. They were baked into the budget before it even reached Congress.

That distinction matters.

According to statements made by former DPWH undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, those “pre-insertions” or “allocables” were handled at the department level by the late undersecretary Cathy Cabral. This is the same Cabral who was recently identified as a central operator in the DPWH kickback system and whose sudden death along Kennon Road last 19 December only deepened the public unease about the entire affair.

Put simply, the picture that is starting to emerge is even uglier than we already suspected.

Much of the public discussion so far has focused on insertions during congressional deliberations on the General Appropriations Act. That is already bad enough. But these new details expose another layer of the system. Even before the budget is debated, even before lawmakers start carving it up, some projects appear to have already been locked in for those who are sufficiently close to power.

This is where the phrase “malapit sa kusina” (near the kitchen) takes on a whole new meaning. If you are part of the ruling family, or close enough to it, you apparently do not need to wait your turn. You do not need to justify your projects through proper planning or prioritization. You just pick up the phone and somehow your preferred line items find their way into the National Expenditure Program.

And this one-billion-peso allocation is not even the full story. From 2020 to 2022, the district of Representative Paolo Duterte received a staggering fifty-one billion pesos in allocations. Taken together, these figures raise an unavoidable question. Are we really surprised that so many flood control projects are ineffective, poorly designed, or outright useless?

If the projects are not the product of rational planning, technical assessment and genuine need, but instead are the result of political patronage, the outcome is almost guaranteed. You get infrastructure that looks good on paper, costs a fortune, but does next to nothing when the rains come. You get roads that wash away, drainage that clogs and flood control projects that somehow never control floods.

This is another area where the late Undersecretary Cabral could have shed crucial light. She reportedly knew how these pre-insertions worked, who requested them, and how they were approved. Her death has deprived investigators of a key source of testimony, but it cannot be allowed to deprive the public of answers.

The responsibility now falls squarely on the remaining officials and institutions. The DPWH must open its books. The Ombudsman must follow the trail of these pre-insertions just as seriously as it is now scrutinizing congressional insertions. Who requested these projects? On what basis were they approved? And who ultimately benefited?

This angle of the flood control scandal deserves just as much scrutiny as everything that has come before it. Corruption does not only happen during budget debates. What this recent news reveals is that sometimes, it happens quietly, long before the budget deliberations even start.