Source: China News Weekly
On September 21, 50,000 protesters gathered in the Luneta Park in the centre of Manila, the capital of the Philippines, against the heat and rain. Many people wore white clothes or wore white straps and waved the Philippine flag, raising the banner "burn them into prison" and demanding that all corrupt persons be brought to justice.
On the same afternoon, protesters marched along the main street of the city, Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA), launching a “trillion pesos march” condemning the government’s massive flood prevention budget for more than a decade, but with little effect.
A few kilometers away from Luneta Park, the situation was tense near the presidential residence and the government office area. Some young people burned their trailers, demonstrators threw stones at the police, and police dispersed them with high-pressure water guns and tear guns. According to official follow-up reports in the Philippines, the protests resulted in a total of 224 people arrested and more than 130 police officers injured.
On the same day, protests of varying scale broke out in more than 20 cities across the Philippines, pointing directly to institutional corruption. Paul Chavez, a 24-year-old student at the University of Manila Medical School, said to the media: "We are tired of this corrupt system.
September 21 was a special day for the Philippines. On this day in 1972, Marcos, the father of current President Marcos, declared a national struggle. Half a century later, people again went out on the streets to protest. But this time, Marcos’ attitude was in sharp contrast to his father’s iron-arms. He openly said: “If I wasn’t the president, I might go on the streets with them. We should all be angry because what is happening is wrong.”
Since July, the corruption scandal of flood control projects in the Philippines has continued to ferment. In September, the speakers of the Senate and the House of Representatives were replaced one after another in less than 10 days. Marcos announced the establishment of an "Independent Commission on Infrastructure" and vowed to fight corruption. However, the outside world widely questioned its sincerity in anti-corruption.
Sol Iglesias, an associate professor of political science at the University of the Philippines, said that such a massive protests matched the severity of corruption and that the amount involved in flood prevention contracts alone amounted to hundreds of billions of pesos.Iglesias said in an interview with China Newsweek that the protests were another outburst of a long-standing public hatred of corruption, but the deep roots are in the long-standing institutional weaknesses in the Philippines: dress band, oligarchy monopoly and family politics.
"The current anti-corruption measures are more tailored to maintain family power, and they don't really touch the root causes of corruption," Iglesias said.
A “terrible” corruption scandal
In his third State Speech in July 2024, Marcos announced that the government had completed “more than 5,500 flood prevention projects” in response to the coming rainy season, and said more were still underway.
A year later, in his fourth State of the Union address, he changed his self-confidence and publicly apologized instead. Marcos admitted that there was a large-scale corruption problem in flood control projects, which caused these infrastructures, which should have protected people from disasters, to almost fail under the continuous impact of southwest monsoon and typhoon.
Since July this year, typhoon "Wepa", tropical storm "Francisco" and typhoon "Comey" have successively invaded the Philippines, exacerbating the influence of the southwest winds, causing national floods.
While a crowd is struggling to survive in the flood, a video spread widely on the net sparked public anger. The Philippine architect and architect Disaia showed in the video their garage with at least 28 European-American luxury cars, including Cadillac Carré and Rolls-Royce Curinate. In front of the footage, Ms. Disaia even laughed at one of the reasons for buying a Rolls-Royce is “a favorite umbrella in the car.”
Later, more videos were revealed: the children of some contractors who were closely connected with politics showed their names, left the country on a private plane, and even publicly mocked ordinary people. Protests sprinkled mud on a contractor's luxury house, and the residents of Forbes Park in the wealthy district of Manila jointly petitioned the government to strengthen security.
In September 2025, a congressional hearing would push the controversy to its height.The Disaia couple testified that they were forced to pay high discounts to a number of lawmakers and public works officials to obtain flood prevention projects contracts, up to a quarter of the total project amount, and some funds even flowed to senior levels such as Representative Martin Romualdes.
Despite failing to provide the exact amount, contract details, or direct evidence, the couple stressed that they had a complete record of the bribery time and location, and were willing to continue testifying in the closed-door hearing, provided they were personally protected.
The explosion sparked a public shock, and Minister of Public Works and Highways Manuel Bonoon subsequently blamed for resigning. Both the House of Representatives and the Marcos government respectively announced the initiation of an investigation.
The data show that over the three years since Marcos took office as the 17th president of the Philippines, the Philippines has invested approximately 545 billion pesos (approximately RMB 6,81 billion) in flood prevention projects. But in recent months, heavy rains and floods have caused catastrophic damage, and many cities have been flooded, highlighting serious vulnerabilities in the flood prevention system. A large number of projects led by the Ministry of Public Projects and Highways have been questioned as "ghost projects", alleged contractual fraud, budget falsehoods, progress delays, and even cases of "finished billing" but never started work.
In recent weeks, Marcos has repeatedly visited the disaster area to see the flood prevention project and found the problem to arise. In the city of Balivag, in the province of Prague, he even found a flood prevention dam marked “finished” and paid in full, which doesn’t exist at all.
Marcos criticized the large scale of corruption and the severity of the absence of punishment, "terrible", and then launched the "Report to the President" website, encouraging the public to report corruption in the project anonymously, in just a few days received more than 16,000 complaints.
“No one can escape.”
“This flood-fighting corruption scandal is the biggest government crisis that Marcos has faced since he took office in 2022 and if mismanaged or severely impacted his political legacy,” said Sol Iglesias.
Marcos was clearly aware of the seriousness of the problem. On July 28th, he rarely bluntly said in his State of the Union address: "There is no need to pretend. The public knows very well that such projects are always accompanied by various claims and kickbacks. Those who conspire to steal public funds and deprive the people of their future should be ashamed!"
A preliminary investigation by the Blue Ribbon Committee of the Senate and the Infrastructure Committee of the House of Representatives showed that thousands of flood prevention projects that have been invested by the government since 2022 amounted to 54.5 billion pesos, with lack of quality, lack of recording and even complete false reporting.
Centerways Architecture and Development is one of the 15 most profitable companies to undertake related projects, with the company’s President, Lawrence Lubianno, exposed as the largest contributor to the 2022 Senate President’s campaign for Escudo. The survey also found that the two brothers of Lubianno have held public office in the province of Soso, and that his company has acquired most of the flood prevention projects in the province in recent years, while the Escudo family also has strong political influence in the province.
This scandal led to Escudero's ouster on September 8th, just over a month after he was re-elected as President of the Senate.
In response to public doubts, Marcos also set up an "Independent Infrastructure Commission", whose members include former Supreme Court judge Andres Reyes, former Minister of Public Works Rogerio Hinson, Rosana Fajardo, a partner of SGV, the largest accounting firm in the Philippines, and Benjamin Magaron, Mayor of Baguio City.
On September 15, Marcos announced the launch of a comprehensive investigation, pledging to “reveal the true faces of the fraudsters and find out how much money they stole.” Marcos stressed that “no one could escape” this independent investigation of the last decade’s flood prevention and infrastructure projects, including his cousin and Chairman of the House of Representatives, when asked how to ensure that relatives are not privileged, Marcos answered clearly: “There is only one way – they will not be released.”
On the afternoon after Marcos made this statement, the Philippine House of Representatives suddenly adjourned due to the news of a "coup attempt against Romualdez". It is reported that some members of parliament are planning to remove Romualdez. That night, Romualdez entered the presidential palace, Malacanang Palace, to meet Marcos. The presidential palace confirmed the news of the talks, but refused to disclose details.
Less than 24 hours later, at 3:23 p.m. on September 17, Roosevelt announced his resignation at the plenary session of the House of Representatives: “The longer I stay, the heavier this burden will be. For me, for the House of Representatives, and for the President. After consideration, he resigned as House Speaker.”
Romualdez has long been regarded as the "core agent" of the Marcos family in Congress. With the intensification of the game of budget allocation, his political role has gradually become the focus of the wrestling between Marcos and Duterte. Romualdez not only pushed the Presidential Priority Act to pass, but also played a key role in the budget cuts and impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte.
Edson Tapia, a professor at the University of the Philippines, said the resignation was both a response to public pressure and a “strategic self-defense” to prevent the scandal from dragging the president further.
However, corruption allegations continue to erode. The Office of the Inspectorate has accepted reports of 12 false documents and 12 corruption crimes against Romualdes and several lawmakers, amounting to 24.1 billion pesos (about RMB 30.1 billion). The Philippine Anti-Money Laundering Commission has since frozen 727 bank accounts related to flood prevention projects, and Executive Director Matthew David said: “The scale of the amount involved reflects the astonishing extent of corruption in the flood prevention project.”
Saul iglesias pointed out that in the face of the widening crisis, Marcos government and the ruling coalition are seeking a compromise path: responding to public opinion by punishing the most serious violators and promoting limited institutional reform. In this process, the investigation of the "Independent Commission on Infrastructure" and the change of the power structure of Congress are expected to be the key to quell social contradictions.
However, the true credibility of Marcos’s anti-corruption action depends on how many people will eventually be exposed and whether his allies will be severely punished for public investigation. Dr. Anthony Bolha, a scholar at the University of Delaware, told China Newsweek: “We must constantly question his anti-corruption sincerity. How far will he go if he is sincere?
“First Man”
The Philippines has long been influenced by clothing ties, oligarchy monopolies and family politics, leading to a weak foundation of the state system, especially a serious lack of balancing mechanism between the three powers of administration, legislation and justice. Sol Iglesias believes that in reality, these powers often do not oversee each other, but form a conspiracy to establish a system of tolerance and cover up corruption, giving the public a general sense of powerlessness and a mentality of destiny.
In his article, published in 2024, “The Philippines: The Social Structure of Corruption,” scholar Andrew Gus emphasized that corruption has become a structural malaria in the Philippine society. It manifests itself as both small bribes in everyday life and as a huge network of corruption manipulated by senior officials. In the Philippines, corruption is not only a disorder of personal behavior, but also a structural phenomenon deeply embedded in social mechanics. Asylum relations as the core of political and social life, blurring the boundaries of mutual assistance and exchange of interests, making it difficult to distinguish between loyalty and paranoia, and corruption thus deeply embedded in national governance and development processes.
Although every president has made a high-profile declaration of "eradicating corruption", the reality is that corruption continues to spread, penetrating into the core institutions of the government, and there are high-risk loopholes in the judicial and police systems, public services, land management and natural resources. According to the Corruption Perception Index released by Transparency International, the Philippines ranked 113th in 2019, down 18 places from 2015; In 2024, the Philippines scored only 33 points, ranking 114th. Scores consistently below 50 on an index of 100 points indicate that the country has a serious problem of public sector corruption and a chronic failure to meet the global average.
The recent outbreak of flood protection engineering scandal has also exposed this institutional corruption in the Philippines. Former Supreme Court Grand Judge Capillo said straight: “President Marcos allowed Congress to invest more than 400 billion pesos in public projects and the roads department budget, a key driver of corruption.” he believes that Marcos high-profile disclosure of 15 contractor monopoly contracts, but for the removal of responsibility and “preemptive people”, it is difficult to mask government tolerance and failure at the institutional level.
On September 22, the Philippine Presidential Office publicly stated that Marcos was willing to accept an investigation into whether he had received illegal political donations from public works contractors during his 2022 campaign. Earlier, the Philippine Investigative News Center that Marcos and Vice President Sarah Duterte had both received donations from companies that had business with the government in a clear violation of the relevant law.
Sol Iglesias analysts believe that Marcos launched this round of anti-corruption operations in the second half of his term with the intention of diverting the public’s anger through two strategies: one is to focus on flood prevention scandals and shift the public’s doubts about the distribution of the budget for 2025; and the other is to selectively strike political opponents in the name of anti-corruption and “political liquidation” for the mid-term election losses.
Political analyst Cleve Agüelles noted that the leaders of the two houses of parliament had dropped as a result of the scandal, in turn allowing Marcos to re-establish control over parliament at a critical moment. By supporting the new Chairman of the House of Representatives Fosteino Lee, Marcus has ensured that the majority of seats remained firmly in his hands, and that even a later term of office could further consolidate power within the party.
However, according to Sol Iglesias, public confidence remains the biggest obstacle Marcos faces, given his family’s history and the corruption accusations he currently bears, as well as the limited anti-corruption reform measures he has taken, “President Marcos himself is difficult to consider as a truly credible anti-corruption fighter.”