r2krn statement on corruption in flood control projects
Mahiya naman kayo!
This, in his fourth State of the Nation Address last Monday, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. issued a harsh public rebuke of those supposedly behind the widespread corruption in flood control projects. It is common knowledge, he said, that these projects are riddled with rackets, kickbacks, SOP, “for the boys” or are even “ghost projects”.
To address the issue, he ordered the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) to submit and disclose a list of all flood control projects from the past three years, for review by the Regional Project Monitoring Committee. He also announced an audit and performance review of the projects to ferret out and hold accountable those responsible for corruption, including colluding contractors.
But a list bereft of important details will just be plain striptease.
The Right to Know Right Know Coalition is ready to formally engage this process but with a few guarantees and guardrails for success.
The process should begin with the President drawing up a credible Terms of Reference (ToR) for the audit, possibly through an executive order. This ToR must:
- Clearly define the objectives, scope, methodology, and the standards and benchmarks to be applied to assess the integrity of specific projects.
- Guarantee full access to documents, including bidding documents, awarded contracts, and disbursements.
- Include a review of the beneficial ownership of private contractors, their ultimate beneficiaries and potential links to politicians or public officials that may indicate conflict of interest or collusion.
- Establish the composition of the audit team, with explicit inclusion of independent third‑party participants, such as representatives from R2KRN.
- Provide the team with a clear mandate and delegated powers, including authority to access records from concerned agencies and to conduct site inspections.
- Ensure dedicated funding so the audit is not crippled by lack of support.
- Vested with the full authority of the President, including explicit directives compelling cooperation of all relevant agencies, oversight powers to enforce compliance, and moral suasion that signals seriousness and encourages citizen engagement.
- Specify the timeline and deliverables to ensure the process does not drag on indefinitely.
Given the gravity of the President’s own pronouncement, the country’s key accountability institutions must also act decisively. The path to truth, after all, entails investigation, audit, and prosecution tasks — explicit mandates and duties in law of various other state agencies.
To guarantee that the process goes beyond the mere lamentations of a President, the Right to Know Right Now Coalition:
- Exhort the Commission on Audit (COA), in line with its constitutional mandate to examine, audit, and settle all accounts pertaining to public funds, to initiate an independent special or fraud audit of these flood control projects.
- Call on the Office of the Ombudsman to fully exercise its extensive constitutional powers to investigate acts of corruption and inefficiency, pursue accountability through disciplinary action and prosecution, and to examine systemic causes of corruption and recommend reforms. It is the Ombudsman’s duty not only to hold individual wrongdoers accountable, but also to address the deeper patterns of collusion and misuse of funds. It has the authority to do all these on its own, without need of a complaint.
- Ask Congress — the House of Representatives and the Senate — in the interest of transparency, to match the Executive’s published list of flood control projects by identifying which projects have been triggered by or funded with congressional insertions or initiatives, whether through the General Appropriations Act or other means. Congress, through the appropriate committees, must now exercise its oversight and legislative powers to look into the matter.
COA and the Ombudsman should also publicly disclose their ToRs for their respective audits and investigations. Doing so will inform the public about the direction and scope of their actions and reinforce confidence in the integrity of their inquiry.
To ferret out the corruption and crooks, we need more than just a list.
The beneficial ownership of the contractors, and their political, familial or financial links that may have influenced the award or implementation of projects, must be exposed. Because the problem is so pervasive and systemic, the inquiry should go beyond paper compliance and uncover deeper patterns of collusion between public officials and private actors.
In sum, we welcome the President’s pronouncement but he needs to say and do more to investigate and curb corruption in flood control projects.
Its impact will rest on whether this audit becomes a genuine instrument of accountability. Its effectiveness will depend on whether the country’s other accountability institutions will act in parallel:
- The COA through a special fraud audit;
- The Ombudsman through motu proprio investigation; and
- The Senate and House of Representatives through oversight and disclosure of insertions that funded flood control projects.
Truth be told, the President himself could kickstart the process by disclosing what he knows about which projects are riddled with rackets, kickbacks, SOP, “for the boys” or are even “ghost projects”.
This is the least that our people deserve: Magbukas naman kayo ng lubos at tunay!
Download the statement here: Beyond a striptease list, go the full monty