The Makabayan bloc is calling for an ‘urgent investigation’ into the allegations made by resigned Ako Bicol Rep. Elizaldy Co, who accused President Marcos Jr. and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez of orchestrating graft-ridden insertions in the national budget.
On Tuesday, hours after Co uploaded his latest video detailing anomalies in the budget, the bloc -composed of ACT Teachers party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio, Gabriela party-list Rep. Sarah Elago and Kabataan party-list Rep. Renee Co – filed House Resolution No. 515.
The resolution urges the lower chamber to investigate both Co and Public Works Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo’s statements that other high-ranking Palace officials received kickbacks from insertions in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA).
In an ambush interview with reporters, Tinio said they were concerned about a seeming attempt to cover up for the president now that Marcos was being implicated in the same anti-corruption crusade he launched last August.
‘The public has the right to hear it straight from everybody who has ever been named in this issue,’ Tinio said. ‘We want to know why all of a sudden there is no appetite to continue investigating now that the allegations are inching closer and closer to the president.’
The resolution also directs the appropriations committee to summon and have the following officials formally testify:
1) Former House Speaker Martin Romualdez
2) Former Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin
3) Former Budget Secretary Amenah Pangandaman
4) Former Public Works and Highways Secretary Manuel Bonoan
5) Former Department of Public Works and Highways-Bulacan District Engineer Henry Alcantara
6) Former Education Undersecretary Trygyve Olaivar
7) Former Presidential Legislative Liaison Office Undersecretary Adrian Bersamin
8) Justice Undersecretary Jose Cadiz Jr.
9) John Paul Estrada
10) Mark Tecsay
11) Jocelyn Sereno
Co, the former House appropriations chair from 2022 to 2025, alleged that Marcos – through Romualdez, Pangandaman, Bersamin and Cadiz – ordered the insertion of P100 billion worth of projects in the 2025 budget, and that the president allegedly got 25 percent as kickbacks from it.
He also alleged that from 2022 to 2025, the total sum of kickbacks delivered to Marcos amounts to P56 billion, which was supposedly ‘different’ from the P56 billion that Marcos and Romualdez got from the P100 billion insertions in the 2025 budget.
On the other hand, at the Senate blue ribbon committee hearing chaired by Senator Panfilo Lacson, Bernardo said that he had delivered kickbacks to Bersamin and Olaivar after the projects were inserted in the 2025 budget, though he stopped short of implicating the president himself.
The bombshell revelations further rocked the credibility of the Marcos administration which was already struggling with allegations of anomalous, ghost and substandard flood control projects.
The president, Romualdez and the various officials named by Co and Bernardo have since denied the allegations.
For the Makabayan bloc, however, both Co and Bernardo’s revelations ‘establish a pattern of institutionalized corruption at the highest levels of government, involving not only budget insertions, but a sophisticated and long-running system of monthly kickbacks and profit-sharing arrangement that directly implicate the president and his closest political allies.’
They noted that almost all the officials implicated by Co and Bernardo – Pangandaman, Bersamin and Olaivar – have since stepped down from their posts or dismissed ‘under circumstances that suggest an intention to shield them, and possibly the president, from further public scrutiny and from unnecessary investigation.’
Given these grave allegations, the bloc said, Congress must fulfill its constitutional duty to investigate these allegations, even if it means ‘reaching the highest levels of power.’
‘All officials involved in corruption, from past to present administrations, from the small fry to especially the big fry, must be held accountable,’ they said.