27/11/2025
ES Recto’s ‘contratista’ ties
will further smear Bongbong
by Jarius Bondoc - Nov. 26, 2025
Bongbong Marcos dumped Lucas Bersamin as Executive Secretary. He wanted to distance himself from the P1.7-trillion flood works scam. But in appointing Ralph Recto, BBM will all the more be dragged in.
Bersamin was indirectly linked to ex-Rep. Zaldy Co, the biggest “contratista”-congressman. Recto is closely tied to Rep. Tirso Edwin Gardiola, the second biggest.
Actually Gardiola is now the biggest contractor-congressman, after Co resigned in September. It’s out of the frying pan into the fire for BBM.
Recto’s bond to Gardiola was shown in May 2024. He and then-Speaker Martin Romualdez godfathered the lavish wedding of Gardiola’s offspring in Florence, Italy.
Gardiola billeted his cumpadres in the fanciest Florentine hotel, and feted them with stretch limousines. He supposedly paid their first-class roundtrip plane fares and other travel luxuries.
Recto and Gardiola are Batangas province mates. Recto’s wife Vilma Santos is provincial governor. Their son Ryan Recto is sixth district congressman.
Gardiola has several public works contracts in Batangas. Recto represented the sixth district until Dec. 2023, before joining Marcos’ Cabinet in Jan. 2024 as Finance Secetary.
Gardiola recently hit the headlines when exposed by Batangas first district Rep. Leandro Leviste. The latter complained that Gardiola inserted P22-billion public works in the 2025 national budget, including a billion in his first district.
Leviste based his revelation on documents obtained from resigned DPWH USec. Catalina Cabral. Those showed that Gardiola in early 2024 was able to insert public works in Malacañang’s 2025 National Expenditure Program. Gardiola’s construction firms as well as his assignees consequently bagged the contracts in 2025.
Leviste turned over the papers to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, which is probing the P1.7-trillion plunder. In turn, he said, the ICI told him that with Co out of Congress, Gardiola now holds the most number of contracts.
A Senate investigation exposed Cabral as the Cabinet fixer of pork barrels. Senate President Tito Sotto disclosed that Cabral called his staff to ask if he wanted insertions for the 2026 NEP. After disavowing wrongdoing, Cabral resigned.
Gardiola couldn’t be reached for reactions to Leviste’s exposés. Leviste said his colleague called him through another congressman to request non-disclosure and to just talk things over in the presence of Speaker Faustino Dy III. Leviste instead went public.
Gardiola hails from Mataas na Kahoy town in Batangas’ third district. His vast estates include a private golf course and helipads.
Gardiola owns a mansion in Punta Fuego, Nasugbu, in Leviste’s first district. Gardiola also has a project in Malarayat, Lipa City, in the Rectos’ sixth.
Leviste said Gardiola is close to three Cabinet members. Asked if one of them is from Batangas, Leviste declined to name names “because he is a friend of my mom”, Senator Loren Legarda. Leviste took interest in Gardiola because the latter has six road works in his first district. “Soon after I won as congressman” in Election 2025, Leviste said Gardiola phoned him to lobby for a roadwork in the town of Tuy. “He wanted me to make the local officials agree to his proposed asphalting instead of their preferred concreting.”
DPWH’s usual asphalting price is P50 million per kilometer, but the material washes away from rain if laid over rough road. Tuy municipal officials want sturdier, cheaper concrete.
Leviste said ICI will investigate Gardiola’s scheme of inserting public works in the NEP, then cornering the contracts. Bids allegedly are rigged for Gardiola’s and friends’ firms, he added.
The Philippine Competition Commission has uncovered several such rigged contracts among the P1.7-trillion fake and faulty flood works in the past ten years.
Gardiola in the 1980s was an employee of the DPWH where he became close to manager and later Secretary Manuel Bonoan. The latter resigned Aug. 31st.
Gardiola became a contractor in the 2000s and made it big starting 2012-2016. He ran afoul of the BIR for unpaid taxes on several sports cars. He became party-list representative of Construction Workers Solidarity in 2022, and is now on his second term. He reportedly owns three real estates in California worth about a billion pesos.
Recto was Deputy Speaker during the passage of the 2024 national budget. That budget included allocations for a vanity Charter Change to make Romualdez prime minister. It also included hundreds of billions for flood works.
The admin fell short of cash in 2024 due to Congress’ wasteful spending. As new Finance chief, Recto took P60 billion from Philhealth and P110 billion from Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp.
That weakened the State health insurance and the banking industry. Recto squandered half of Philhealth’s P60 billion to start the Panay-Guimaras-Negros Island Bridges. Yet Korea already lent money for it.
Marcos last September promised to return Philhealth’s P60 billion through the 2026 national budget. But it’s nowhere to be found in the expenditure program that Recto helped to prepare.
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