Flood control mess dwarfed scandals post-EDSA revolt

The year 2025 was a record-breaking one for corruption, with the flood control mess making all other government scandals post-EDSA revolt in 1986 look like a drop in the bucket.

- By DELON PORCALLA

Despite P142 billion in alleged flood control fund insertions in what was touted as the “most corrupt budget ever” in Philippine history – P3 billion of which was vetoed by President Marcos nothing prevented flooding across the entire archipelago.

The bicameral conference committee-approved P1 trillion budget for 2025 for the Department of Public Works and Highways was trimmed to a little over P900 billion, ostensibly because it cannot and should not-be bigger than funds earmarked for education.

The amount of public funds stolen, which can be visualized through the billions of pesos in P1,000 denominations shown by the sacked Bulacan district engineers - beats even the so-called grandmother of all scams in the mid-90s by a long shot.

The PEA-Amari scandal that the late Senate president and The STAR columnist Ernesto Maceda exposed in 1996 was worth P1.6 billion and only reached as high as P31 billion, only because the amount largely depended on the "valuation" of the property located in commercial areas in Pasay.