Classic Corruption: Lining the Pockets of Soldiery while Rest of the People Burns
Part Two: The Marcos-Romualdez War against the Dutertes
A picture that speaks a thousand words.
What decision-making can we expect from a fractious government led by a drug addict? President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. owes the Filipino nation, a comprehensive drug test at the very least, and when positive, a resignation and subsequent rehabilitation in private seclusion.
It is not enough that the country has no strategic direction on sight. But to lose opportunities, waste resources and deprive the people of a chance at surviving over daily needs is an implicit manifestation of tyranny.
Therefore, eschewing the budget to fatten the pockets of the military at the expense of national interest is not only the height of jingoism but classic corruption.
We don’t love our armed forces any less, but to turn them against the people is unabashed bribery and a desperate attempt to salvage the interests of an incompetent dynasty governing the country.
The Pulse Asia survey reveals the most urgent needs of the population is economic. The top four starts with controlling inflation at 72%, increasing the pay of workers at 44%, reducing poverty at 32% and creating more jobs at 30%. Compare this with two of the last four priorities – 5% for defending the integrity of Philippine territory against foreigners and 2% for preparing to face any kind of terrorism which are military matters.
Note the fifth most urgent – fighting graft and corruption in government at 22$.
Let’s sort this out by starting to verify if the accusation of Rodrigo Duterte, our past president, holds water in that this government has no projects for the benefit of the people.
Marcos Jr. promised us Build Better More (BBM).
But his national budget, crafted by his obese cousin House Speaker Martin Romualdez deprioritized many flagship infrastructure projects partly funded by foreign loans. Without excess funds (such as those from PhilHealth or other government corporations), these projects will be stalled. Worse, the government pays a commitment fee for foreign-funded projects even if they’re deprioritized in the budget. What that means is that we’re still shelling out money for projects that will be stalled.
For the first time in the history of government appropriations, funds that have been allocated for projects were deliberately transferred to unprogrammed distribution of stimulus packages for political patronage. In lieu of infrastructure, nearly 20% or a fifth of the national budget (specifically the programmed appropriations or those with “guaranteed cash cover”) was allocated for legislators’ pork projects (banned in 2013 by the Supreme Court) and for financial assistance programs, broadly called “ayuda”.
Naturally, the prioritization of pork and ayuda are linked to incumbent lawmakers’ bids for the 2025 elections. Every lawmaker wishing to get a piece of the pie will therefore need to be at the Speakers’ bidding. Otherwise, they get scraps.
Inflation of commodity prices and shrinkflation of products against cost characterize the market. Marcos’ promise of rice at P20 per kilo has ballooned thrice to P60, while the Philippines becomes the top rice-importing country in the planet. Projected GDP @7% was down to 5.2 last quarter and tourism is at 2015 levels.
It was no surprise that last October, the Social Weather Station polled 59% of Filipino families, or 16.3 million people, rated themselves as poor. This is the highest percentage of self-rated poor families since June 2008. Subsequently, street crimes and drug-related offenders have also returned.
The cost of electricity is one of highest in the region, a heavy burden to the population’s lowering per capita income. Foreign investments have withered away by prospects of a war of United States against China, with the Philippines serving as the American proxy, and the waning value of the peso against the US dollar.
In aggravation, this administration wallows in charges of corruption both in the use of public funds and in granting behests to the President’s cronies in the private sector.
Funds have been siphoned off from Government Security Insurance System, Social Security System, PhilHealth, Land Bank of the Philippines and the Central Bank. Gold reserves have been sold to foreign buyers. Around one trillion pesos in flood-control projects are unaccounted for. There are reported scams in the sweepstakes, legalized gaming, bidding of agricultural imports and unmitigated smuggling at Customs.
Worst of all, the Marcos bellicose presidency entered into a dalliance with the Americans to modernize our military which was anticipated to get a lower priority owing to the fact that Communist and Moro insurgencies had already been effectively quieted under Duterte.
Instead, Marcos and Romualdez have bankrolled the Armed Forces of the Philippines, following orders from Washington DC to create a new enemy – China, thereby shunting a humungous Chinese economic assistance that ran into the score of billions in US dollars in addition to preferential trade, tourism and investments during the Duterte administration.
The curious thing is that the military gets a pittance of $100 million a year in foreign military credits (a soft-interest, long term lend-lease that has to be paid back in time) for five years, but with nil economic advantage.
The Philippines even had to add four more bases to the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement started with five in 2014. Now we host the Typhon Weapon System stationed at Laoag City that is not only capable of launching intermediate-range missiles, but magneting a nuclear preemptive attack that would wipe out 5 million Ilocanos in a flash.
The people get nothing in return from the Americans. AsiaWeek (China edition) has however exposed that the Uncle Sam promised to return to the Marcoses $61 billion of their hidden wealth and frozen assets in the United States.
If this faustian agreement were true, it has been at the expense of the Filipino people since February 2, 2023 when Marcos agreed to four new EDCA sites to the US military, without a commensurate economic package for the people to replace Xi Jinping’s offer of a fat development assistance starting at $23 billion.
I will no longer detail here how Marcos proxied for the Americans engaging China in cat-and-mouse skirmishes in the South China Seas in pursuit of a false flag armed with tired arguments of protecting our sovereign rights in areas where China claims sovereignty and territorial waters.
The vaudeville placed our uniformed men and women in the navy and coast guard in harm’s way. The most recent was the lame patrol of Escoda Shoal, an area that is not even covered by any of our claimed features manifested through treaty limits or Presidential Decree 1596 (Kalayaan Island Group). Our coast guards returned home months after, some in stretchers, deprived of food and water and needing medical attention due to gastro-enteritis.
As we speak, our military and coast guard assets are now strictly monitored by Chinese law enforcers, and could hardly perform un-innocent passage in the South China beyond our 12 nautical miles of territorial sea. We have even added Vietnam and Malaysia to China’s opposition to our misguided interpretation of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.
Today the business and investor confidence has dissipated with the forthcoming end of the term of Joe Biden with whom Marcos Jr has been in bed with trusting his empty “iron-clad commitment”. Donald Trump assumes the presidency of the United States by January 20, 2025 and signs augur the Philippines will not be in the radar of Washington DC as his administration pursues a policy of avoiding war.
Misquoting Digong
Meanwhile in country, the prospect of another people power revolution is rising in the horizon.
But as we have shown in our first part, unlike Ombudsman Samuel Martires’ dedication to the ascendancy of facts and rigid logic in enforcing due process of law, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin engaged former president Rodrigo Duterte in a twisted discourse.
I do not suggest Bersamin put preference on his gratitude to Duterte for past positions, as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and upon his retirement from the bench, Chair of the Government Security and Insurance System, I only expect him to do his duties faithfully moving forward and not just lick the boots of his present appointing power by poisoning the democratic space.
Last November 26, Duterte took a jab anew at President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., calling him a drug addict, and challenged the military to protect the constitution.
“There is a fractured governance sa Pilipinas ngayon (in the Philippines right now). Nobody can correct Marcos, nobody can correct Romualdez… There is no urgent remedy… It is only the military who can correct it,” Duterte said in a press conference.
Duterte also asked the military if it would continue to support Marcos if it knew he was a drug addict: “Hanggang kailan kayo mag suporta ng drug addict na presidente?”
Again, Bersamin jumps into the water decrying Duterte’s call to the military to launch a coup plot against President Marcos Jr. – “Hindi katanggap tanggap ang marahas na pang aagaw ng kapangyarihan upang madaling maluklok bilang pangulo sa pamamagitan ng pagpaslang, panggugulo at pag-aalsa“.
(A coup d’etat is unacceptable, as it involves killing, foments chaos and incites strikes.)
Jay Sonza, a former broadcaster now a vlogger, observed: “Mukhang nabulongan ng maling impormasyon si Bersamin. Halata kasing hindi niya napanood iyong presser ni PRRD na pinanood ng almost 12M viewers. Wala naman pong sinabing ganoon kagabi si Tatay Digong.”
(It appears he was fed the wrong information, as obviously he did not watch the press conference that was viewed by 12 million. Duterte did not mention anything close to those.)
As fact check, the former president even clarified that he was not calling for the establishment of a junta, adding the military doesn’t need to mount a coup. “They can just say we no longer want to play your game, we’re out.”
To my mind, Duterte’s suggestion was more of a withdrawal of support. But Bersamin was verbose adding the government will defend its legacy before the Filipino people only by lawful means and the state will act resolutely to go against all unlawful attempts and challenges. “This administration will not shirk from its sworn duty to govern and manage the affairs of the Filipino Nation according to the Constitution and Rule of Law.”
The former chief justice forgot that Article II, Section 3 of the 1987 Philippine Constitution provides that “The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is the protector of the people and the state.”
Hence it is not illegal, but in fact perfectly legal as it is constitutional, that the AFP intervenes to correct a “fractured” government in order to preserve the “state” which is the totality of the people. As the late constitutionalist Allan Paguia declared, “the sovereignty the government exercises is only a derivative sovereignty, as delegated by the people acting as absolute sovereign.”
This is relevant as sectarian sectors have again started to color politics with calls to a return to moral values. A Catholic cardinal has called for the need for social stability while a provincial archbishop has condemned massive corruption in government. Iglesia ni Kristo has announced for their flock to prepare to go to the streets to block the impeachment of the vice-president, which another sect calls for the impeachment of the president instead.
Unlike Rasputin, Bersamin is not a religious figure. His distinguishing qualifications come from having served the judiciary for more than 30 years. My analogy also does not carry on to the debaucherous demeanor of the monk.
Yet having come from a political family in the province of Abra, where his brothers held elective positions: Eustaquio Bersamin as governor, and Luis Bersamin, who was assassinated in 2006, as congressman, he ought to navigate soberly even in the midst of dirty politics, and if not yet late, keep partisan interests within the first family in check and serve as the sobering difference in support of the peoples’ most urgent national concerns. #
Adolfo Quizon Paglinawan
is former diplomat who served as press attaché and spokesman of the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC and the Philippines’ Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from April 1986 to 1993. Presently, he is vice-president for international affairs of the Asian Century Philippines Institute, a geopolitical analyst, author of books, columnist, a print and broadcast journalist, and a hobby-organic-farmer.
His best sellers, A Problem for Every Solution (2015), a characterization of factors affecting Philippine-China relations, and No Vaccine for a Virus called Racism (2020) a survey of international news attempting to tracing its origins, earned for him an international laureate in the Awards for the Promotion of Philippine-China Understanding in 2021. His third book, The Poverty of Power is now available – a historiography of controversial issues of spanning 36 years leading to the Demise of the Edsa Revolution and the Forthcoming Rise of a Philippine Phoenix.
Today he is anchor for many YouTube Channels, namely Ang Maestro Lectures @Katipunan Channel (Saturdays), Unfinished Revolution (Sundays) and Opinyon Online (Wednesdays) with Ka Mentong Laurel, and Ipa-Rush Kay Paras with former Secretary Jacinto Paras (Tuesdays and Thursdays). His personal vlog is @AdoPaglinawan.
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