Bersamin, whose post traditionally endows him with the title “Little President”, called the allegations of former public works undersecretary Roberto Bernardo – that the Office of the Executive Secretary had received around 15 per cent worth of kickbacks from certain projects – “not true”.

Retired Supreme Court judge Antonio Carpio said last Friday on a radio show: “The tipping point is very near if it’s not here already. Because this is really the biggest corruption scandal in history.”

On whether the scandal would touch the first couple, University of the Philippines criminal law professor Barry Gutierrez told This Week in Asia it was still early days, but “given the emerging extent of this corruption machinery, though, it certainly is possible”.

“I don’t think he realised it would snowball into this,” Gutierrez added, referring to Marcos’ July state of the nation address, in which he first disclosed the corruption and told colluding government officials and private contractors: “Shame on you.”

Philippine anti-corruption protests turn violent

The former congressman said Marcos’ hasty creation of the “ad hoc” Independent Commission for Infrastructure instead of an institutional response backed by statute, indicated the president was “flying by the seat of his pants, desperately trying to keep pace as the situation spirals out of control”.

“It appears that this was a far-ranging system that involved a lot of high-level officials. And this is just flood control in one district in Bulacan that we’ve zeroed in on so far,” Gutierrez said, referring to the Senate testimony of former public works chief engineer Henry Alcantara, who calculated on September 2 that ghost projects might amount to 5 billion pesos in the first district of Bulacan alone.

Under oath, Alcantara admitted signing non-existent projects as “completed”. Acting public works secretary Vince Dizon promptly dismissed him from service and intends to charge him criminally.

“The implication is that there was a lot of complicity from so many in government, so unsurprisingly, with so many benefiting, they would endeavour to keep it quiet,” the former congressman said.

President’s potential liability?

Carpio believes Marcos “cannot escape liability”. Congress had at the last minute inserted 450 billion pesos into this year’s public works department budget, which congressional investigations showed went to highly questionable projects. Of that, Marcos had vetoed or removed only 29 billion pesos, leaving 421 billion pesos still intact in this year’s national budget that he himself signed into law.

By the very act of signing the budget containing those questionable congressional insertions, Marcos “owned up, he is responsible for this 421 billion insertion … So he cannot escape liability”, the former justice argued.

Gutierrez said the people’s anger had placed “senators under pressure to be perceived as fair and not favouring their colleagues”.

“My sense is that [Marcos] knew [about the scandal] all along and had to step in so that he would be seen as a whistle-blower. He probably saw it as an opportunity to change the narrative of his administration,” University of the Philippines political science professor Jean Franco told This Week in Asia.

Marcos’ father, the late dictator whom he was named after, has been recognised since 1989 by the Guinness World Records as holding the record for the “greatest robbery of a government”, accused of stealing up to US$10 billion from state coffers, including public works projects.

Shortly before the May 2022 presidential election, however, when most surveys indicated his son would win, Guinness pulled out the entry for a “re-examination”.

To restore people’s trust, Franco said, “prominent names, including politicians, must go to jail”.

The scandal has already made its economic presence felt. The Philippines’ stock exchange index and broader All Shares index stayed in the red for the third day on Thursday.

Financial risk analyst Jonathan Ravelas, managing director of eManagement for Business and Marketing Services, told This Week in Asia that due to the scandal, “the economy is in a holding pattern, definitely. It’s a wait and see. The stock market movements reflect the doubt in the Philippines despite the resilient economy”.

The typhoon tore through power lines and brought floods and landslides in several areas. A landslide along one of the major highways in northern Benguet province left one dead and several others injured.

Livelihoods are also likely to be affected, with widespread agricultural damage expected as farms were submerged after torrential rain.

Even Metro Manila was not spared. Schools and government offices declared class and work suspension as heavy rainfall brought up to chest-deep floods in several areas.

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Super Typhoon Ragasa lashes northern Philippines, over 10,000 evacuated

Super Typhoon Ragasa lashes northern Philippines, over 10,000 evacuated

Ragasa comes amid rage over flood control infrastructure projects – many of them substandard or totally non-existent – that has been mounting since Marcos highlighted them in a July state of the nation address following weeks of deadly flooding.

With flood control anomalies fresh in people’s minds as they wade through the waters yet again, the public is expected to be more hawkish than ever over how Marcos would deal with calls to enforce accountability among corrupt officials while managing on-the-ground disaster response.

‘Walking on a tightrope’

“The Marcos administration is walking on a tightrope. Filipinos will now scrutinise every move the administration makes. The administration can no longer hide under the guise of resiliency; hence it must now step up,” Nathaniel Candelaria, assistant professor of political science at the University of the Philippines, told This Week in Asia.

Arjan Aguirre, an assistant professor at the Ateneo de Manila University’s political science department, said the controversies surrounding flood control projects amid deadly typhoons battering the country revealed a pattern that the president cared “more about his image than providing quality response”.

“It seems like the current responses made against corruption are directed to make him [seem] in control and … doing the right thing,” Aguirre said, citing Marcos’ state of the nation address and the establishment of an independent commission investigating these infrastructure projects.

“It is logical to assume that they will use the same approach in dealing with the typhoon – thinking of government responses that are meant to project that Marcos is also in control of the disaster response work,” he added.

Instead, Aguirre said, the president should place less emphasis on himself and “make his government work by showing that other stakeholders are contributing to the disaster response work”.

While hailing the independent commission, Candelaria stressed that there should be legislative measures to strengthen it and ensure its true independence.

Marcos faces a “tricky situation” in balancing these optics, according to Gino Trinidad, a doctoral researcher on urban poor settlement communities at the University of the Philippines’ National College of Public Administration and Governance.

In contrast to corruption investigations that take some time, disaster response required Marcos’ presence to “be felt on the ground,” coordinating offices and touching base with affected communities, Trinidad said.

Marcos’ own family history, marred by his father’s 21-year martial law rule when billions of pesos were plundered from state coffers, also cast doubt on his sincerity in dealing with corruption.

“It also does not help that the president’s family has been associated with public corruption. Some would not miss the irony of the president leading the investigations into such anomalies. The onus is on the president to show his seriousness in curbing public corruption,” Trinidad said, adding that the administration should strengthen existing institutions “for exacting accountability from public servants”.

“At the end of the day, the president’s anti-corruption rhetoric would be judged by its outcome – that is, whether the parties that should be punished are actually punished,” he said.

“It would be best for the Marcos administration to extend all the support it can give to the proper conduct of the investigations and mete out the necessary punishments to the parties involved, regardless of their personal connections.”