Palace mouthpiece Claire Castro was adamant that former speaker Martin Romualdez was not referring to his cousin, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., when he warned — in so many words — that when the flood control scandal explodes, he will not be going down alone.

That is a generous reading. Almost charitable.

Romualdez, after all, did not whisper, although some saw him “whimper.” He came out shooting from the hip, declaring he would not allow himself to be the “scapegoat” for “somebody else’s corruption.”

The timing was not accidental. It came just after Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla denied his request to fly to Singapore for a medical checkup following an angioplasty, a decision that effectively grounded him.

Remulla, for his part, raised eyebrows by pointing out that the travel request came on the heels of reports that former Ako Bicol Partylist representative Zaldy Co had been “arrested” in Prague over immigration issues.

As it turned out, Marcos himself had purveyed “fake news” when he confirmed Co’s “arrest” on social media. Then no less than the Department of Justice (DoJ), in describing its officials’ junket to Prague, walked back the Marcos misinformation.

Which brings us to the inconvenient question Castro sidestepped by referring to the fingerlings from the Department of Public Works and Highways now behind bars awaiting trial in lieu of the big fishes: if not Marcos, then who exactly was Romualdez talking about?

There are not many candidates.

Co, in a series of video posts, had accused both Marcos and Romualdez of being beneficiaries of billions in kickbacks from flood control projects. That allegation, hanging in the air like humidity before a storm, gives Romualdez’s warning a very specific target.

As an aside, since Co was not arrested, with the Philippines having no extradition treaty with the Czech Republic, and with the DoJ saying there’s no timeline for bringing him home, we could well kiss goodbye the prospect of the expelled lawmaker accusing Marcos and Romualdez face-to-face.

There is no higher official than the President. And there is no more powerful gatekeeper in the House than the Speaker — especially when it comes to shepherding what critics have called the “most corrupt” budget in recent memory, the 2025 national budget.

To Romualdez, insofar as the bicameral conference committee was concerned, those who dipped their hands in the budget cookie jar were no other than his Senate counterpart at the time, Chiz Escudero, and Co.

Still, to suggest that Romualdez was speaking into the void when he issued that threat is to assume a level of abstraction that politics rarely indulges.

A fellow DAILY TRIBUNE columnist, Dennis Coronacion, who heads the University of Santo Tomas Political Science Department, is not buying Castro’s version. Coronacion lays out the logic plainly.

First, he notes that the implementation of national projects and the disbursement of public funds fall squarely under the executive branch. Command responsibility, therefore, rests with the President, who oversees agencies like the DPWH and the Department of Budget and Management.

Second, Romualdez has lately found himself in the Ombudsman’s crosshairs. And the Remullas, like Romualdez himself, are not exactly outsiders to the President’s circle. When the Ombudsman publicly disclosed that plunder cases were being prepared against Romualdez and Co, the message was hard to miss.

Third, the denial of Romualdez’s request to seek medical treatment abroad — on the grounds that he posed a flight risk — only reinforced the sense that the walls are closing in. In fact, Remulla had the Sandiganbayan issue a hold departure order to keep Romualdez home.

Put these together and the subtext sharpens: Romualdez appears to believe he is being positioned to be the fall guy. And so the warning. If he is “thrown under the bus,” as Coronacion described it, he will not go quietly. He will, as he put it, “tell everything.”

One does not issue that kind of threat into empty space. One aims it.