WHAT the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) was to the Aquino III-Abad administration, the “insertions” in the General Appropriations Bill for 2025 is to the Marcos-Romualdez regime, but perhaps a hundred…

THERE is a very clever media (mostly) spin going on to cover up the biggest case of corruption in the post-dictatorship era. As over-the-hump Antipolo Rep. Ronaldo Puno declared it, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his cousin, former speaker Martin Romualdez, had nothing to do with the flood control scam involving P25 billion in kickbacks, most of it already delivered to the latter’s residences.

That is, as Puno put it, the two most powerful men in the country were outmaneuvered by former Senate president Francis Escudero, and the former party-list representative Elizaldy Co, who should be blamed for the crime.

The spin yesterday was that the justice department and the Ombudsman has filed corruption cases over anomalous flood control projects against presidential cousin and former House speaker Martin Romualdez, ex-congressman Co and 17 other officials of the Public Works department. The Daily Tribune headline says it all; “First salvo tags Co, Romualdez.”

In his privilege speech the other day, Lacson demonstrated his shameless service to Marcos as PR man and pretend-lawyer. He claimed that it was not Marcos who asked then-House appropriations committee chairman Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co and speaker Martin Romualdez to insert the 800 projects worth P100 billion into the budget law, from which he got P25 billion in kickbacks.

Rather, he said, it was then-executive secretary Lucas Bersamin, his grandnephew Adrian Bersamin, Education undersecretary Trygve Olaivar who told — separately or together, Lacson did not explain — Co to insert the projects into the budget.

His source? A very compromised one: Public Works undersecretary Roberto Bernardo, who in Senate hearings had confessed that he was practically at the center of this Marcos scam as well as those that Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) officials undertook on their own. Lacson even carelessly revealed that Bernardo was his source, and that he was in close touch with him, which raises the possibility that the senator has recruited the undersecretary to draw the charges away from Marcos — for a price, in kind (admission into the witness protection program) or otherwise.

Zaldy Co Statements released 15Nov25 and 14Nov25 and 16Nov25: Videos, Transcriptions and Translations lifted from official page of Zaldy Co

PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. refuses to disclose his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALN) for one key reason. This would help investigators, plaintiffs and a future administration unfriendly to the Marcoses to track and recover the billions linked to his family’s notorious alleged ill-gotten fortune, amassed during his father’s 20 years of rule, 13 of which as a dictator.

If they do manage to have Marcos’ assets declared in his SALN — which are subject to forfeiture to fulfill a United States federal court judgment — his family could end up bankrupt — unless, of course, he and his wife have managed to stash their own ill-gotten wealth.

The forfeiture cases against the Marcos assets still stand. Robert Swift, the lawyer for the group of human rights victims that won the class judgment from the Hawaii court, got an initial 10-year extension of the statutory limit in 2011 and another 10 years extension, which extends the judgment to 2031. But a new administration hostile to the Marcoses in 2028 could scramble to collect on the US court’s judgment.

Last of two parts

WHAT makes the International Criminal Court’s case against former president Rodrigo Duterte so abominable is that it is entirely based on a deliberately fabricated deception: That his drug war involved mass murders, with the ICC prosecutor first claiming 30,000 killed, even as the closest kind of investigations by human rights groups and a biased media after since 2016 — and still continuing — claim only 76 killed, the number adopted by the ICC in its charge sheet.

A deception by whom? Mainly the US Deep State, which wanted to make sure Duterte and his daughter Sara totally are removed from the political landscape, so a presidency servile to it isn’t ended in 2028.

As the latest ICC charge sheet put it: “The attack comprised multiple acts.. against the civilian population of the Philippines, including but not limited to the 76 murders, as well as at least hundreds of other murders during the mayoral period, thousands of other murders in the presidential period.”

First of two parts

NEXT to his servility to the US which has alienated us from the superpower in the region, and made us targets in a US-Sino war, it is the kidnapping in March of former president Duterte, 80 years and frail, by the Marcos Jr. regime and shanghaiing to a dubious “court” in Hague that is President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s worst crime against the nation.

At least in the arrest of two other presidents — Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo — it was Filipino judges who heard their cases. Duterte’s judges are a Romanian, a West African and a Mexican who probably think the Philippines is just like the tribal, bloodthirsty leaders from sub-Saharan nations who have been the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) victims.

Now, Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla doesn’t realize how appalling this was that he seems to be delighted that the ICC wants to put Sen. Ronaldo Dela Rosa in the same hellish situation, that is really a betrayal of our sovereignty.