“Thus, ‘mahiya naman kayo’ clearly addressed to his instant audience and the syndicates they are in cahoots with, some of whom possess the dual personality of legislator and contractor rolled into one”
When DPWH officials, from district engineers to regional directors to higher officials in the central office connive with legislators who earmark funds for public works projects motivated by collective greed, the corruption is systematic.
To be able to execute their agreed upon loot-sharing, they need private contractors who are willing to fork over the commissions, or “tong-pats” in street language.
The caper is planned and organized by a syndicate composed of legislators who ensure funding for their chosen projects in the GAA, or by LGU officials for local projects, farcically bid and awarded by agency officials to contractors who are willing to come to terms and cough up the required tong-pats, thereby making everybody in the graft chain happy.
The syndicate is glued together by “mavens,” a rather sophisticated term borrowed from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, actually a middleman, a person who has the ear of the funder, is trusted by the district engineers and higher, and knows cooperative contractors as well. In a sense, he is also considered a “bagman.”
One such notorious maven wormed himself into the power circles since GMA was sidelined during PNoy’s time, resurrected by congressional leaders despite Duterte’s warnings, and is now riding high once again.
That projects are either “ghost” but paid (we are into the lunar calendar’s ghost month, which started on Aug. 23, will peak on Sept. 6, and end on Sept. 21, incidentally the 53rd anniversary of the proclamation of martial law), or shoddily constructed to last until payment is made, or a few months after.
The systematic plunder of taxpayer money is discovered only when natural calamities expose the sub-standard construction or even non-existence of the project.
Why, even the president was taking pride in more than 5,500 flood control projects in his 3rd SONA, only to be embarrassed days after when heavy rains caused massive flooding.
But this time, in his 4th SONA, he was sufficiently aroused by the magnitude of the floods and pictures of crumbling flood control contraptions that were so visible in media and videos supplied by ordinary citizens.
Thus, “mahiya naman kayo” clearly addressed to his instant audience and the syndicates they are in cahoots with, some of whom possess the dual personality of legislator and contractor rolled into one.
The legislators provided the means, be it through built-in requests in the NEP dutifully followed by DPWH officials, or insertions done through the “power of the purse” in the GAA and signed without much scrutiny by the president or his appointed officials, thence implemented through public and private collusion.
These days, after the president inspected a few of these projects, and Senator Ping Lacson bared details in the Senate, with its Blue Ribbon Committee vowing to unearth the syndical perpetrators, why even the HoR has come up with a three-headed hydra which no less than the president’s son considers unseemly, of the suspects being investigated by their colleagues.
The question in most everybody’s mind is, what would the end game be?
Will we just hear denunciations and some cases against DPWH personnel, followed by the silence of the wolves, yet in the end, the systematic corruption goes on, lying low now, and coming back with a vengeance?
Interviewed about his stint as PNoy’s DPWH secretary, Rogelio “Babes” Singson gives us insights on how the syndicates can be neutralized. But it needs honest, decisive and effective leadership from a department head with street smarts, backed up fully by the president no less.
In his time, Singson did not allow congressmen to dictate who should be district engineers, and kept their authorization limited to a third of what has now become the practice.
Has inflation become so high over the last nine years as to justify an increase from 50 to 150 million?
Insertions that did not conform to proper plans of the DPWH as submitted to both the president and the congressional leadership were not implemented.
Determined leadership is key, and compliance with what PNoy called the “daang matuwid” was practiced as far as possible.
Do we have this now?
And can we expect results after the current brouhaha boils over?
Or will this be another Napoles saga where one contractor is tried and jailed, while the big and most influential hide in some provincial or foreign retreat as their highly paid lawyers connive with transactional judges?
How about the public works officials? And most of all, how about the legislators?
“The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind.” Will PBbM, this time around, give the people reason to believe?
(to be continued)
