In the Philippines, corruption isn’t some occasional accident, but a ritual. A national pastime with its recurring cast, predictable plot twists, and a script that never seems to change.
What’s truly surprising is the creativity of the schemes and their sheer, brazen repetition. The higher you go, the bigger the numbers get, and the quieter the consequences become. Let’s do a countdown.
It starts at Number 10. The Stonehill Scandal of the 1960s. An American businessman, a little black book, and what was then an unimaginable sum. The solution? Deport the man, bury the ledger, and let the system live. Lesson learned here: if you’re connected enough, your exit is prepaid.
Fast forward to Number 9. Tobacco funds of Ilocos Norte. Allegations of misuse, cases dismissed on technicalities. The farmers’ question hung in the air: “Where did our money go?” It’s a question that echoes through every scandal.
Then there’s Number 8. The Judiciary Scandal. There were no faces on billboards here, just whispered deals and cash for decisions. It told us that in this country justice comes at a price.
I remember the anxiety of that era when a local official just shook his head and said, “It’s bigger than any one person.” He was right.
Number 7 brings us ghost projects and reblocking scams at the DPWH — roads to nowhere, bridges on paper. Senate hearings flare up, some low-level engineers take the fall, but the deal’s architecture stays standing.
Number 6 hits closer to our digital age: the NBN-ZTE deal. A 16-billion-peso broadband contract, a whistleblower named Jun Lozada, and allegations leading all the way to the First Gentleman. The Senate spun, the public raged, and the project was canceled. The money was saved, but the trust was another ghost project.
Number 5 is pure classic. Plunder. Former president Erap, Atong Ang, jueteng money, and a guilty verdict that, for a fleeting moment, felt like justice. Until the pardon came. The message was clear that a conviction is just a comma, not a period.
We all lived through Number 4 — the PDAF scam. Janet Napoles, fake NGOs, and legislators on the dock. Some are in jail, some are back, some have passed on, but the masterminds? The system that enabled it? Still largely untouched.
Now we’re at the heavyweights. Number 3 could be many things, but let’s talk about the Hello Garci and Fertilizer Fund mess — audio tapes of electoral whispers and over a billion pesos in fertilizer funds allegedly used as political fertilizer. It was a national uproar that ended in nothing.
Number 2 is the one that is drowning us all — flood control funds. Year after year budgets vanish, and the floods get worse. Powerful names float in congressional hearings, but the water and the questions keep rising.
And Number 1? It’s the mother lode — the Marcos wealth. Estimated in the hundreds of billions, a symbol of impunity so vast it redefined the scale of graft. The Supreme Court had labeled parts of it ill-gotten, but the justice has been slow, partial, and painfully symbolic.
This is not a historical countdown but a living loop. We know the names, we can recite the amounts. The real question is not how they happened — but why we keep allowing the same story to replay, with only the price tag going up?
When will we finally stop counting scandals and start counting convictions that actually stick? Maybe tomorrow. But as another day of 2026 in the Philippines begins, it feels a lot like yesterday.