Romualdez‘s rage a sigh of relief

“I will not be a fall guy for other people’s corruption.”

The declaration will be a sensational part of the impending collapse of a shady political enterprise involving men and women in the highest echelons of power in the Executive and Legislative branches.

The foreboding statement by former speaker Martin Romualdez speaks of serious implications for whom, what, how, and where the over one-trillion-peso kickbacks from ghost projects were apportioned.

Romualdez, whom former representative Zaldy Co has alleged was among the recipients of the spoils of the ghost flood control projects, had been eerily quiet since the start of the probes of the Senate and the Independent Commission for Infrastructure. Co’s flight to Europe apparently shattered the triumvirate with Romualdez and President Bongbong Marcos.

Alone and lonely in Spain or Paris, Co was proscribed from flying home, which gave the impression that he was being made the poster boy for the unprecedented rip-off of the nation’s coffers via the ghost flood control projects carried out by the most corrupt agency in the government — the Department of Public Works and Highways.

As Romualdez has correctly pointed out, the multibillion-peso heist involved plans and programs emanating from the Executive branch, meaning the Office of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., and then to Congress for funding and then back to Marcos for implementation.

The document flow was correct except there was a “small committee” that wielded amendatory powers, among them to insert unprogrammed funds in the General Appropriations Bill before it was submitted to the President for his signature.

Romualdez claimed that nowhere in the process was he involved. But a travel hold order has been issued against him. A few days ago, he was barred from traveling to Singapore for a medical checkup. Whether it had something to do with the looming repatriation of Zaldy Co, only Ombudsman Crispin Remulla knows.

If that was not enough, Remulla also endorsed an information to the Anti-Money Laundering Council for a freeze order on Romualdez’s assets. That triggered Romualdez’s stern warning that he might just go for the jugular of the characters who are making his life miserable.

On the part of Co, who was reported to have been arrested by Czech authorities by no less than Marcos himself, we can expect the same explosive revelations. If it is true that he will be consigned to the calaboose, you can bet he will go for broke and drag everyone in the corruption loop to damnation.

And that will be the nation’s sigh of relief.