“Nobody is even shocked anymore”
Congratulations, Philippines: your President (the guy who literally writes the national budget before breakfast) reportedly turned into a bicam beggar holding a cardboard sign that reads “₱100B pang-proyekto lang po, God bless.”
That, dear reader, is the blockbuster accusation dropped by former Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co from the safety of wherever he is hiding abroad.
And the entire country is asking one devastating question: if you literally own the budget before Congress even sees it, why would you wait until the smoky, chaotic bicam to beg for your own money?
Former Budget Secretary Butch Abad called it “cheap.”
Navotas Rep. Toby Tiangco called it “unbecoming.”
Former Finance Undersecretary Cielo Magno called it flat-out “dumb.”
Even Senate Blue Ribbon warhorse Panfilo Lacson shook his head and muttered the story has “no probative value” until someone swears to it on Philippine soil.
They all agree on one thing: presidents do not beg. They command. They insert in the NEP. They do not line up at the bicam like a contractor waiting for his SOP.
Yet according to Zaldy Co, that is exactly what happened. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. allegedly handed him a personal wish list, relayed through Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman and confirmed by presidential liaison Adrian Bersamin, while cousin Speaker Martin Romualdez nodded along.
One hundred billion pesos, mostly for Department of Public Works and Highways flood control and roads, slipped in at the last minute like a desperate late-night Foodpanda order.
Let us be perfectly clear: Zaldy Co is no angel.
His family owns Sunwest and Hi-Tone Construction, companies neck-deep in the very flood-control anomalies now under Ombudsman investigation.
Walls collapsed in Oriental Mindoro after a few rains. Contractors tied to him appear on the same “Top 15 cartel” list Marcos himself denounced months ago.
Then, poof, he resigns, flees, and suddenly becomes the nation’s conscience from a country with no extradition treaty. Convenient.
The Palace calls it “wild accusations.” Malacañang dares him to come home and swear under oath.
Zaldy answers with another video and a partial list that mysteriously omits every single project linked to his own firms. Selective martyrdom is still martyrdom, I suppose.
The favorite conspiracy theory making the rounds: they chose bicam because it “guarantees the 25 percent kickback.”
In the gutter logic of Philippine pork, that almost sounds clever.
Bicam is dark, rushed, chaotic, perfect for overpriced projects awarded to pre-selected contractors who know exactly how much to return upstairs.
Except it’s the dumbest possible way to run a heist.
If you want a quiet, reliable cut, you do it in the NEP, your private kingdom, where DBM technocrats salute and nobody asks questions.
You do not invite 50 legislators, their chiefs of staff, and a dozen senators into the room and pray none of them ever talks.
Bicam is the opposite of discreet; it is the noisiest, riskiest, most leak-prone stage of the entire budget process.
If the goal was kickbacks, then congratulations: you have invented corruption so loud it comes with its own press conference.
So here we are. Two possibilities, both catastrophic.
If Zaldy Co is telling the truth, we have an administration so arrogant and so incompetent at graft that it cannot even steal properly. It turned the most powerful office in the land into a bicam tambay begging for its own money.
If Zaldy Co is lying, we have a political system so rotten, a public so jaded by ghost projects and collapsed walls, that the most ridiculous accusation instantly sounds believable.
Either way, the Filipino loses.
That ₱100 billion, whether inserted by presidential whim or congressional sleight-of-hand, came from our taxes.
While they argue over who held the begging bowl, we are left with flooded streets, crumbling walls, and the bitter knowledge that the next scandal is already loading.
Welcome to Philippine democracy: where the most powerful man in the country can allegedly become a tambay asking for “pang-proyekto lang po,” and nobody is even shocked anymore.
Until the next bombshell,
