[In This Economy] We have to revisit finances, infra anomalies below Duterte

Scandalous flood management tasks are what everybody appears to need to speak about lately.

However an essential piece of the puzzle that doesn’t get an excessive amount of consideration is that this downside isn’t in any respect new. There have been already many doubtful infrastructure tasks in the course of the time of former president Rodrigo Duterte. Patterns of finances misuse lately had their origins within the earlier administration.

Price range officers

You may recall that in 2018, former finances secretary Benjamin Diokno was accused by some lawmakers of abusing energy to affect the insertion of P332 billion value of flood management tasks within the 2017 to 2019 proposed budgets.

Furthermore, Diokno was accused of utilizing his affect to insert questionable flood management tasks in Casiguran, Aurora, the place the mayor then was Edwin Hamor, whose spouse, Sorsogon Vice Governor Esther Hamor, is the mother-in-law of Diokno’s daughter.

Casiguran Mayor Edwin Hamor ran for reelection in 2019, the 12 months for which big finances insertions (totaling P385 million) for Casiguran have been made.

Later, it was admitted by the district engineer of the 1^st District of Sorsogon that he had requested P385 million for flood management tasks for the 2019 finances, simply when Diokno was finances chief.

Many individuals questioned why a lot funds needed to go to Casiguran, when neighboring cities like Matnog have been at a lot higher threat of flooding.

Tellingly, Edwin Hamor’s youngsters additionally admitted to establishing Aremar Development Firm, the place Diokno’s son-in-law was additionally one of many incorporators. (We all know now from the instance of the Discayas how building contractors play an important function in anomalous public works tasks.)

Diokno vehemently denied any involvement, saying, “Within the issues of that state I’ve no family members, I’ve no pals…I’m very goal, unbiased. I don’t speak enterprise with anyone besides the road departments.”

However I feel the Diokno connection has some relevance to newer occasions.

Diokno is carefully affiliated with the present finances secretary, Amenah Pangandaman, who’s now additionally in scorching water for permitting tons of of billions of pesos in insertions within the proposed finances from 2023 onward.

When Diokno was finances secretary in the course of the Duterte administration, Pangandaman was already working in Diokno’s workplace and later turned finances undersecretary. She was often called a “key mover” within the preparation of the nationwide finances, even in these days.

In 2019, simply as Congress was investigating finances anomalies, a witness from the Division of Public Works and Highways testified that Pangandaman gave them a request to “reformat” the 2019 finances for the DPWH and insert a listing of tasks amounting to P51 billion. There was one other set of insertions, so the full was P75 billion. Pangandaman was known as the “puppet grasp of all this charade” by the late Camarines Sur Consultant Rolando Andaya Jr. 

Shortly after this, Diokno moved to change into the governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP); he’s now again there as a Financial Board member. When Diokno first moved to BSP, he roped in Pangandaman who would work as Diokno’s chief-of-staff and later be appointed BSP assistant governor by 2021.

Then in 2022, Marcos would appoint Pangandaman because the finances secretary, simply as Diokno turned the finance secretary.

What this all suggests is that the present points surrounding right now’s finances debates seem linked to patterns already noticed in the course of the Duterte period, when Pangandaman was likewise a “key mover” in finances preparation.

I invite everybody to pay higher consideration to Price range Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, and never simply the Discayas, different contractors, lawmakers, and district engineers.

Flood management tasks in Davao Metropolis

As early as Could 2020, when the pandemic was simply beginning, my pals and I have been already writing about flood management anomalies in Davao Metropolis. At the moment, the federal government was grappling for funds to regulate the pandemic, however the finances was geared towards infrastructure spending.

We had observed an explosion of allocations for hyperlocal infrastructure tasks comparable to roads, bridges, multipurpose buildings, and sure, flood management.

As an example, the proposed finances for flood management and drainage within the Nationwide Expenditure Program (or proposed finances) was simply P6.2 billion. However within the closing finances or the Normal Appropriations Act, it greater than quadrupled to almost P26 billion.

The place did all of those funds go? The highest vacation spot was Davao Metropolis, getting practically P850 million. At the moment, the 1^st District consultant of Davao Metropolis was no apart from Paolo “Polong” Duterte. Lawmaker allies of the Duterte authorities additionally received big flood management windfalls in their very own districts.

More moderen studies present that from 2019 to 2022, Davao Metropolis managed to amass P51 billion value of flood management tasks. It’s good that lawmakers are planning to debate this within the ongoing Home of Representatives investigation on flood management.

Regardless of the inundation of flood management funding in Davao Metropolis, paradoxically, town continues to expertise extreme floods at any time when it rains. In reality, the very best focus of flood-prone areas in Davao Metropolis are within the 1^st District. Hmm…

However Duterte-era flood management tasks ballooned nationwide, not simply in Davao Metropolis. The graph beneath exhibits that allocations for flood management have greater than doubled from P103.7 billion in 2017 to P210 billion by 2022 (Duterte’s final finances).

Briefly, infrastructure outlays exploded all through the Duterte administration, and it’s a apply that was merely scaled up by the present administration.

CLTG

Senator Bong Go, the longtime aide of former president Rodrigo Duterte, has his personal hyperlinks to flood management contractors.

It seems that his father’s agency, CLTG Builders, had beforehand labored with the Discayas on infrastructure tasks throughout the Davao Area. (CLTG coincides with the letters of Senator Go’s title: Christopher Lawrence Tesoro Go.)

A Rappler investigation discovered that from 2016 to 2018, CLTG was in a position to get 42 tasks totaling P3.6 billion. In a case filed by former senator Antonio Trillanes IV in opposition to CLTG and one other agency, Alfrego (owned by Senator Go’s brother), the full quantity of contracts obtained by these two corporations have been reported to achieve P6.6 billion.

Senator Go denied involvement in his household’s companies, however the potential battle of curiosity can be evident, particularly since that was a time when flood management tasks have been poured into Davao Metropolis’s 1^st District, and the finances chief (Diokno, Duterte’s appointee) would even be concerned in his personal scandal.

Vince Dizon controversy

Talking of Duterte-era figures, we have to point out one thing about Vince Dizon, who was appointed not too long ago as the brand new secretary of the Division of Public Works and Highways.

Many individuals reward him for doing a “good job” on the Division of Transportation, and plenty of are hopeful that he’ll assist cleanse the DPWH of its corrupt ranks.

However folks might have forgotten that Dizon was a Duterte appointee years again, and Dizon was implicated in his personal public works scandal when he was the previous president and CEO of the Bases Conversion and Growth Authority (BCDA) from 2016 to 2021.

You see, BCDA below Dizon entered right into a P11-billion take care of Malaysian agency MTD Capital Berhad for the development of New Clark Metropolis’s sports activities services for the 2019 SEA Video games. (Extra common for the development of a P50-million cauldron that extra carefully resembled a kaldero.)

MTD spent P8.5 billion, largely through a mortgage from the Growth Financial institution of the Philippines, however BCDA should repay P11.1 billion — P2.5 billion extra — plus share earnings 50-50 with MTD for 25 years.

This deal was flagged by authorities counsels for resembling a build-and-transfer scheme moderately than a real three way partnership, and so they stated it ought to have gone by means of rigorous bidding. There have been additionally allegedly doubtful “insertions and modifications” within the unique contract.

By 2020, Dizon and three different people have been slapped with a graft and malversation case that continues to be unresolved to today. Now, Dizon is the brand new DPWH secretary.

If President Marcos is de facto eager on cleansing the ranks of DPWH, possibly he shouldn’t have appointed somebody who’s implicated in his personal public works scandal, albeit harmless till confirmed responsible. Are there no untainted officers on the market who might do the job as an alternative?

Anyway, it’s good that increasingly Filipinos have now opened their eyes to the blatant corruption in public works. However to resolve it, we have to return in time and dig up all of the Duterte-era anomalies. – Rappler.com

JC Punongbayan, PhD is an assistant professor on the UP Faculty of Economics and the writer of False Nostalgia: The Marcos “Golden Age” Myths and Methods to Debunk Them. In 2024, he obtained The Excellent Younger Males (TOYM) Award for economics. Observe him on Instagram (@jcpunongbayan).