17/10/2025
TAMAAN SANA KAYO NG KIDLAT!
Opacity caused flood scams,
so ICI probe must be public
by Jarius Bondoc - Oct. 17, 2025
Gen. Rodolfo Azurin is what activists of 1970, 1986, 2001, and 2014 would’ve called “fascist pig”. Sworn in Monday as adviser to the Independent Commission for Infrastructure, he berated citizens and flood victims protesting massive corruption. The ex-PNP chief saw only “division, chaos, violence” in their rallies.
Lost to Azurin are the basic freedoms of expression, assembly, seeking redress. He’d rather that all just shut up while ICI investigates behind closed doors P1.7-trillion plunder of flood control funds.
But why behind closed doors? Isn’t transparency, like sunlight, the best antiseptic? Azurin may want to check the background of one of ICI’s three commissioners.
Rossana Fajardo is country managing partner of the Philippines’ largest auditing firm Sycip Gorres Velayo. SGV is the external auditor of giant miner Benguet Corp., of ex-Speaker Martin Romualdez and siblings. Romualdez is among officials to be probed by ICI.
Fajardo’s SGV is also external auditor of pioneering constructor Engineering Equipment Inc. and holding firm House of Investments. Romualdez’s RYM Business Management Corp. executed buyouts with both firms in Apr. 2023 and Mar. 2025.
Undoubtedly Fajardo brings into ICI vast experience in forensic audit. She can uncover evidence of financial felonies, for use in court.
Still conflict of interest might taint Fajardo’s ICI. Benguet, EEI, and HI are among the country’s largest firms and SGV clients.
President Bongbong Marcos formed the ICI. Yet he too might need investigating.
For ten years now Malacañang has been inserting pork barrels in national budgets. Budget and Public Works chiefs call those “leadership funds”. Congress transfers to “commissionable” Public Works money for Education, Health, Agriculture, and Defense. Senate-House bicameral committees confer in secret. Two presidents enacted their outputs. Justices came and left without resolving citizens’ complaints.
ICI has no subpoena or contempt powers. It can only invite and be snubbed. New Senate President Tito Sotto and Pro Tempore Ping Lacson have vowed support.
Linked to fake and faulty flood works, ex-SP Chiz Escudero and ex-Speaker Romualdez have heeded ICI invitations. Same with ex-DPWH head Manuel Bonoan and successor Vince Dizon. Reports are that Duterte’s DPWH chief Mark Villar, now a senator, yelled at the ICI. Awaited is Rep. Zaldy Co, linked to one of 15 main constructors.
Yesterday multibillionaire contractors Curlee and Sarah Discaya stopped cooperating with ICI. They accused of bias Commissioner Rogelio Singson, Noynoy Aquino’s DPWH chief. They cited a TV interview in which Singson opined seeing nobody worthy as state witness.
Only the least guilty can be state witness. The Discayas’ nine construction firms allegedly bid against each other to corner contracts. They bagged 1,214 flood works worth P78 billion from 2016 to 2025. Last week the Anti-Money Laundering Council froze their 425 bank accounts through which P180 billion flowed that decade.
Protests are directed against BBM, predecessor Rody Duterte, and impeached but untried VP Sara Duterte. Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte supposedly got the highest infra insertion – P51.78 billion – in his father’s last three years in office. The Discayas et al allegedly had projects in BBM’s Ilocos Norte.
Crooked DPWH engineers, contractors, and politicos enable flood scams. In time their sleaze infected the system.
DPWH appointed undersecretaries to “liaise” pork barrels between legislators and DBM. Testifying at the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, one of them, Roberto Bernardo, implicated even Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin. The latter belied him.
Focused on flood works, DPWH neglected erecting 165,000 classrooms since 2019. Half of 600 super health centers “built” for DOH were ghost. DA’s farm-to-market roads were overpriced. One kilometer cost P300 million, way beyond the P15-million limit. It’ll only be P10 million if the usual 30-percent kickback is removed.
Check-and-balance agencies didn’t lift a finger: Competition Commission under Malacañang, Government Procurement Policy Board under DBM, and Contractors Accreditation Board under DTI. Local officials colluded with dynastic kin in Congress.
Constitutional offices got infected. The Ombudsman hid Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worths. Comelec contracted the Discayas for P18-billion worth of voting machines. COA kept silent as Associate Commissioner Mario Lipana’s wife wangled DPWH road lighting contracts in Bulacan and a mining concession in Pangasinan.
Bulacan DPWH Engineer Brice Hernandez confessed that all their road, bridge, and lighting works were substandard or inexistent.
That’s why Filipinos hold weekly noise barrages, school and work walkouts, and red-letter day Trillion-Peso Marches.
Azurin however wants opacity. During his PNP leadership, Aug. 2022-Apr. 2023, occurred one of its worst scandals. The hideaway of 990 kilos of shabu was uncovered in the Manila office of a PNP Drug Enforcement sergeant. Then-Interior Sec Benhur Abalos wondered why Azurin was mum for a week.
Within hours of that discovery, cops from various units drove by to loot sacks of shabu. Two hundred kilos worth P1.38 billion had vanished. Present Interior Sec Jonvic Remulla said in January that Azurin will face charges for the mess.
(PCO photo)
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