Crucible

You simply cannot appeal credibly to everyone’s sense of patriotism to pay taxes conscientiously if the public sees that you spare family/ friends/allies of this duty.

- WILFREDO G. REYES

Thus a businessman seated beside me audibly muttered to himself at a recent Management Association of the Philippines general membership meeting as Baguio City Mayor Benjamin B. Magalong spoke of insanely massive overpricing that afflicts public works nationwide — from street cat’s eyes, to road safety barriers, to slope nets on hills designed to prevent landslides on roads and communities, etc.

He estimated that the billions of pesos lost routinely to such graft would have been enough to fund scholarships for scores of impoverished youth, as well as the construction of thousands of classrooms, health centers, and social housing units nationwide.

For now, of course, the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) — formed this month under Executive Order No. 94 and which counts retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Andres B. Reyes, Jr. as chairman, former Public Works Secretary Rogelio L. Singson and SGV & Co. Country Managing Partner Rossana A. Fajardo as members, and Mr. Magalong himself as adviser — will focus on flood control projects for the past 10 years. Finance Secretary Ralph G. Recto estimates such projects to have cost us some P118.5 billion in economic losses since 2023.

Whatever details have so far surfaced — since President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. railed in his July 28 midterm State of the Nation Address (SONA) against systemic graft and corruption in these projects — are clearly just the tip of the iceberg. His latest SONA opened a can of worms whose depth has yet to be grasped.

He may have zeroed in on this issue in a sincere desire to rid the country of its dubious image as one of Asia’s most corrupt economies (and thereby improve the lot of ordinary Pinoys), as part of a personal crusade to rehabilitate the Marcos name that was tainted in more than a decade of martial law, or in a bid to improve public trust ratings on the road to the 2028 national elections... or it could be all of the above, and more.