Kingfish swims
Romualdez himself, before his arrest, said that he would not go quietly and would not go alone, which was more of a warning than a threat.
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Romualdez himself, before his arrest, said that he would not go quietly and would not go alone, which was more of a warning than a threat.
Former Speaker Martin Romualdez is facing a plunder charge for the alleged theft of P7.4 billion, a number that looks large until you compare it to the total lost to the corruption scandal which is more than a trillion pesos.
The flood control scandal was a series of thefts stacked one atop another spread across three budget years. Romualdez was one fish, but he may not have been the biggest.
The scandal can be likened to a book. We have only flipped open the cover and several chapters wait inside. The final chapter would be the climax, asking the one question every Filipino wants answered: Was it possible the President knew?
That last chapter will matter most. A budget does not move by itself. It starts in the executive branch. It passes through the Department of Budget and Management.
It goes to Congress, where the House of Representatives and the Senate shape it, finally to the notorious Bicameral Conference Committee. Then it is returned to the President who signs it into law.
Every peso stolen during those years needed an appropriation, which needed a presidential signature. No version of the corruption story has the President outside the process. He stood at both ends of it — on day one when he began the process and on the last day when he signed the budget law.
The Marcos administration cannot take credit for one arrest. A President who signed three years worth of budgets cannot claim ignorance of what those budgets contained. If he knew, he shares in the guilt. If he did not know, he is incompetent at the one job that defines his office. There is no third door.
Romualdez himself, before his arrest, said that he would not go quietly and would not go alone, which was more of a warning than a threat.
A man facing plunder charges usually has two paths: He fights the criminal case, which he is unlikely to win, or he tries to soften it by naming names and returning money. Either way, his defense would argue against a solo conspiracy, because nobody moves a trillion pesos alone.
The public has reason to worry the narrative will end with Romualdez. The economy already shows the cost of letting the scandal fester. Growth has slipped below three percent for two straight quarters. Foreign investment has collapsed.
The national debt has climbed past P19 trillion, more than triple what it was a decade ago.
Surveys say most Filipinos now consider themselves poor. These numbers are the bill for the corruption, and the bill keeps growing while the investigation moves at the pace of a man walking through mud.
There is also a lesson in what happens to leaders who escape consequences. Elsewhere in the world, officials who stole from their people served real time, sometimes 15 years, sometimes longer and harsher. Accountability is not cruelty. It is proof that no office is a shield. A president who signed the documents cannot later disavow his signature.
So the test ahead is simple. Will the investigation stop at the first fish caught, or will it follow its entrails to wherever it may lead, even to the Palace?
The country cannot be made to suffer anew after the Floodgate mess just to watch one big arrest close the book. A trillion pesos was lost and the people deserve to know exactly where all of it went and who let it get there.
Do not let the biggest fish swim free.
