Tossing crumbs after a P1-T feast
The zarzuela, which is meant to lift the profile of the administration while getting back at political foes, has the overall effect of rewarding grand-scale theft.
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The zarzuela, which is meant to lift the profile of the administration while getting back at political foes, has the overall effect of rewarding grand-scale theft.
The Department of Justice recently bragged that P841 million from the flood control scandal has gone back to the National Treasury and is seeking public applause.
The flood control scandal was measured in trillions of pesos, with some estimates placing the loss at P1.14 trillion between 2023 and 2025 alone.
Do the math. P841 million versus P1.14 trillion is a fraction of 1 percent, or rounded to zero. The Marcos administration calls this restitution, which is credited as an accomplishment in his recent State of the Nation Address (SoNA).
“All proceeds recovered from the corrupt will be immediately returned to the public treasury,” the President indicated in his speech, adding that a large part of the salvaged funds had been allotted for education and health.
Apparently skipped was the dimension of the corruption wave under his watch, which even Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan said contributed to the five-year record-low 2.3 percent growth in the second quarter.
Whatever was stolen should come back, but look at how it came back, and the applause turns into something closer to outrage.
Money returned came from Roberto Bernardo, former Department of Public Works and Highways undersecretary: P500 million. He paid it in two installments.
Henry Alcantara, former Bulacan district engineer, handed back P181.4 million; Gerard Opulencia, suspended NCR district engineer: P140 million; Sally Santos, contractor and owner of SYMS Construction: P20 million.
None was returned by their overlords in Congress and the Executive department.
All four, however, are now in the Witness Protection Program and are shielded from prosecution for the crimes they admitted to, in writing, with cash.
Under the law, a state witness who is discharged from a case walks free of that case. It is meant to crack open conspiracies too big to prosecute any other way, but look at what it does here.
A man admits to helping pilfer public money; he hands some of it back. He is acquitted of the very crime he confessed to.
Imagine trying this anywhere else. A man robs a bank. Caught, he says: Here is some of the money, sorry. The police then say: you’re free to go.
The zarzuela, which is meant to lift the profile of the administration while getting back at political foes, has the overall effect of rewarding grand-scale theft.
If getting caught only means giving back part of what you stole, then stealing becomes a bet worth making. Keep it, and you win. Get caught, and you still keep the difference.
The scandal runs into the trillions. The restitution is less than a billion pesos combined. Where did the rest go? The government has been silent about the full accounting.
The arrangement invites the kind of backroom dealing the public should fear most.
It involved intermediaries moving between the accused and the agencies deciding who would receive immunity and who would not.
The deal creates the appearance that immunity has a price, and that someone may have set that price for a consideration.
Restitution without consequence is not accountability. It is a tollbooth: pay enough, and the case disappears. The deal was struck, then announced as a victory.
It is not a victory but a small refund on a massive theft, followed by amnesty for those who admitted to taking part in it.
It is another example of the transactional justice that has become all too familiar under the current administration.
