Outstanding women

Can they help unravel the biggest political crisis in the Philippines in the last 127 years — the syndicated stealing of over P1 trillion of flood control money in the last 10 years?

- TONY LOPEZ

This question faces the 15 outstanding young women of 2025, announced Sept. 17, by the TOWNS Foundation. It is a relevant challenge, given that some of the awardees are in the fields of governance, national and local; human rights, education and journalism, to name a few critical fields.

Women are the majority, the ruling class in the Philippines, certainly not the weaker or lesser sex. They constitute more than half of our population of 115 million.

When governance fails, it is women who are hit hardest. Nearly all our 25 million households are managed by women, often thanklessly and without compensation. When things go wrong, they are the fulcrum of stability and hope.

Our second highest official is a woman, Sara Duterte, the first vice president to be impeached. For graft, for corruption, for malversation of P612 million of taxpayers’ money. She produced thousands of fake receipts (named after fictitious restaurants and chichiria) to cover her trail.

Sara was rescued by Senate president Chiz Escudero, who did not act forthwith on her impeachment, enabling the Supreme Court to concoct new ideas how to derail any House impeachment. Now every impeachable official has nothing to fear — impeachment is nearly impossible to engineer in the House.

Chiz’s wife is angry. Heart has reaped the whirlwind of people’s wrath after Chiz spiraled into ignominy in the gyre of the P1-trillion floodgate. A trophy wife, she was recently gifted with a $1-million diamond ring, thanks to Chiz’s hard work. Heart has a stupendous luxury watch and bag collection, her hard work.

Chiz was ousted as Senate president Sept. 8, 2025 when it surfaced he benefitted from dirty FC money, got a P30-million campaign donation from a, FC contractor and that he engineered P142 billion worth of “insertions” into the 2025 national budget, which money was stolen.