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Two House of Representatives members have backed Makati Business Club (MBC) executive director Rafael ‘Apa’ Ongpin’s view that while the flood control probe must be thorough and apolitical, due process should still be observed for everyone accused of involvement.

In separate statements on Tuesday, Bicol Saro party-list Rep. Terry Ridon and Deputy Speaker Paolo Ortega V said that Ongpin’s perspective – that the Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) investigation should be fair but also follow due process – is a much-needed reminder amid implications that certain officials are already guilty even before a proper trial is conducted.

Ridon said that no one should be exempt from scrutiny when public funds are involved, but all these personalities must be given ‘the right to be heard and the duty to cooperate with lawful investigations.’

‘Mr. Ongpin’s statement is a timely reminder that the rule of law-not rumor-must prevail. We welcome his call for due process because it ensures that investigations are based on facts, not politics,’ Ridon said.

‘Let the institutions work independently and let the truth come out through evidence. That’s how justice is served-and how trust in government is rebuilt,’ he added.

Ongpin, in an interview with Bilyonaryo News Channel’s At the Forefront, was asked whether he believes the ongoing investigation of anomalous flood control projects will be impartial to the administration’s allies.

Ongpin said that it would not look good if President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s cousin, former House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, were merely thrown under the bus instead of having a no-holds-barred and impartial investigation.

‘That question is really, is Bonget (Marcos) gonna throw Martin (Romualdez) under the bus? Okay, let’s get straight to the point, that would not be a good outcome for us if he throws him under the bus [.] It has to be a fair and independent investigation, not at the instigation of Malacañang, you know, they sort of instruct the investigators, oh, tigok na ‘yan (that’s finished),’ he said.

‘No, it cannot be. It has to be fair, right? If he’s really, you know, got some kind of liability, let that be exposed through proper process. These people, I mean, when I say these people, the accused in this thing all deserve due process,’ he added.

Ortega said this stresses their point that justice should not be based on political colors.

‘We welcome Mr. Ongpin’s statement as a reminder that justice must never be selective. The process must be based on facts, not political color or pressure,’ Ortega said.

Furthermore, the Deputy Speaker said that Romualdez has already shown willingness to cooperate with the ICI investigation by stepping down from his post, and by showing up at a previous hearing.

‘We’ve seen the former Speaker face these issues squarely. He has cooperated with investigators and remains committed to the truth. That’s the kind of leadership the public deserves to see,’ Ortega added.

Ongpin during the interview spoke about corruption scandals plaguing the country – from the discovery of allegedly fictitious names that signed acknowledgment receipts for confidential funds (CF) under Vice President Sara Duterte’s offices, to the flood control issue. (with reports from Halle Danelle Yuson, trainee) /gsg

Renewable producer Alba Viento Power Corp. has proposed to construct a P34.8-billion wind facility in Zambales, which will deliver 300 megawatts (MW) of additional energy supply to the national grid.

Based on a document from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), the planned wind farm, dubbed Botolan-Cabangan Wind Power Project, will cover 4,698 hectares located in the municipalities of Cabangan and Botolan.

Construction works for the project are eyed in the first quarter of 2027. Its commercial operation is targeted for early 2029.

‘The proposed wind power plant will help augment the demand for reliable and affordable power supply,’ the company said in the document.

NGCP

‘The proposed power plant will not only supply enough electricity to Filipino households and businesses but will also contribute to national development,’ it added.

Once approved, Alba Viento will connect the facility to the Botolan substation of the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines.

Alba Viento Power is a special-purpose vehicle company wholly owned by Alba Renewables Philippines Corp., which secured a 25-year wind energy service contract from the Department of Energy in 2024 to develop and utilize wind energy in Zambales.

Green capital

The company has also hinted at increasing its green investments in the local market, saying it is ‘deeply committed to advancing the country’s renewable energy goals.’

The current administration hopes to scale up the share of renewables in the electricity generation mix to 35 percent by 2030 from the current 22 percent. It has been encouraging private players to ramp up their spending in the renewable energy market.

Aside from the Philippines, Alba Viento Power is also expanding in Thailand and has the plan to penetrate a third regional market ‘within the next 24 months.’

By 2028, it is confident of hitting a ‘multi gigawatt’ portfolio of operational, under-construction and advanced-stage development assets.

From war relic to blueprint for climate-resilient communities. The Quonset hut story did not end in 1945. Its DNA lives on in modern refugee shelters, emergency clinics, and tiny houses that echo its curved silhouette. But in the Philippines-the very country that field-tested its strength-we have not drawn upon that legacy to confront our most predictable enemy: the yearly disaster.

The physics that never changed. When engineers analyzed why the huts in Tacloban survived, they found one truth: form matters more than fortune. A curved shell lets typhoon winds slide instead of slamming; its compression ring spreads loads evenly to the ground. Even when the panels bent, the structure held together because every joint shared the strain.

These are not exotic lessons. They are practical templates for a new generation of Filipino shelters built of bamboo, laminated timber, or lightweight steel, raised on cement piles above floodwaters, and cooled by natural ventilation instead of costly air-conditioning. The same compression-based logic can shape coastal markets, barangay halls, classrooms, and evacuation centers.

Imagine a national program that treats disaster housing the way Otto Brandenberger treated his 1942 deadline: as a design challenge, not a budget line. Government engineers, universities, private fabricators, and civic groups could collaborate to produce flat-pack, kit-ready shelters-local Quonsets reborn in bamboo. Assembly could be community labor; upgrades could follow as resources grow.

From jeepney to Quonset 2.0. We glorified the jeepney as Filipino ingenuity-the transformation of war surplus into people’s transport. Why not celebrate the Quonset hut as its architectural sibling: the people’s shelter? Both were born from scarcity and improved through creativity. Both embody the spirit of making do and making better.

Our national conversation, however, rarely touches design. We rage-rightly-against corruption, but we seldom demand competent imagination. Billions vanish in overpriced flood control projects while villages still wait for a single safe communal shelter. We mistake indignation for innovation.

The Quonset hut’s resurrection can remind us that planning is moral work-the duty to think ahead so others need not perish. Its rediscovery could unite government agencies, universities, and people’s organizations around something tangible: the design of safety.

Restoring our resilience memory. Institutional amnesia is as dangerous as climate change itself. The Philippines once hosted not only the Tacloban test but also thousands of postwar experiments in low-cost adaptive architecture. University of the Philippines Diliman’s Quonset community, Maryknoll’s steel-arched classrooms, and provincial ‘sawali-Quonset’ hybrids were laboratories of resilience long before we coined the term build back better.

I entered UP Diliman in 1968. We heard stories about how one of the most beloved campus eateries, Little Quiapo, served halo-halo and pancit under a corrugated arch beside other hut-based canteens. As a resident of Narra Residence Hall from 1968 to 1973, I remember spending a lot of evening hours in the bowling alley, billiard hall, barber shop, and sari-sari stores all packaged into a single Quonset hut in the place of what is now the Cesar Virata Hall. The last surviving Quonset hut on the Diliman campus was demolished only in 2016.

Relearning the lessons of the Quonset huts is not about nostalgia; it is about recovering a lineage of solutions that our ancestors already proved. In that sense, ‘romancing’ the Quonset hut means rekindling a relationship with evidence, efficiency, and empathy.

Toward a national shelter imagination. Every typhoon that levels a barangay repeats the question the Quonset hut already answered: how fast can we build protection that lasts? The answer is not imported technology but locally fabricated geometry-structures whose strength lies in shape, not expense.

If the jeepney expressed postwar freedom of movement, the Quonset 2.0 can express our right to safety. It can become the new icon of Filipino resilience: quick to assemble, hard to destroy, easy to love.

We have spent too long lamenting government failure and too little time designing collective success. The next era of public service will belong not to the angriest voices but to the builders of prototypes-those who, like the wartime engineers at Quonset Point, turn impossible constraints into living shelters.

Somewhere in Tacloban’s archives sleeps the data of 1944: 39 huts standing after the storm. That number is not a footnote; it is a challenge. It says that we already know how to survive-if only we remember.

The Quonset hut deserves one more mission: to remind a forgetful nation that resilience begins with design, not despair.

The House of Representatives should initiate an investigation on Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) chief Jose Arnulfo ‘Wick’ Veloso amid revelations that the state-run insurer has suffered over P8 billion in losses, ACT Teachers party-list Rep. Antonio Tinio said on Tuesday.

Tinio, in a statement, said the House needs to check on GSIS and its actuarial life, noting that the status of government employees’ pension for the coming years is of paramount concern.

‘The House of Representatives must immediately investigate these alarming allegations of financial mismanagement, lack of transparency, and apparent circumvention of proper governance procedures at the GSIS,’ Tinio said.

‘We cannot allow the hard-earned contributions of our teachers, nurses, and other government workers to be gambled away through reckless and dubious investments,’ he added.

According to Tinio, the call from current and former GSIS board members for Veloso to resign only highlights the pressing need to check on the issues in GSIS.

Over the weekend, current and former high-ranking officials of GSIS have called for the ‘immediate and irrevocable’ resignation of Veloso, the state-run insurer’s president and general manager, for alleged ‘poor investment decisions’ that led to the huge losses.

According to the letter dated October 14, 2025, Veloso was accused of pursuing risky investments ‘marked by a disturbing lack of transparency.’

‘Your continued presence at the helm of the GSIS puts the welfare of its 2.6 million members-dedicated public servants who have entrusted their life savings and future security to this institution-in imminent danger,’ they wrote.

‘The primary mandate of the GSIS is to manage its funds with utmost prudence, diligence, and loyalty. Your current trajectory suggests a departure from this sacred mandate, prioritizing transactions that serve interests other than those of the members,’ they added.

The letter was signed by the following officials:

Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez, chair of the legal oversight committee

Emmanuel de Leon Samson, chair of the risk oversight committee

Rita Riddle, chair of the audit committee

board member Evelina Escudero

former board members Jocelyn de Guzman Cabreza and Alan Luga

Gutierrez, Samson, and Riddle eventually submitted their respective resignations to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., citing deep divisions over Veloso’s investment strategies.

On Monday, Palace press officer and Undersecretary Claire Castro said that Marcos is well aware of calls to remove Veloso and issues hounding GSIS, addign that the Chief Executive is studying allegations against the GSIS head.

‘What we know is that the President wants people who fulfill their responsibilities. He expects proper leadership and good governance in every agency,’ Castro told reporters in a briefing. (with reports from Halle Danelle Yuson, trainee)

The ongoing controversy over anomalous flood control projects may have sparked a silent, but potentially damaging, taxpayer revolt.

Last week, Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) Commissioner Romeo Lumagui Jr. said ‘.there was definitely a slower collection because of the issue, because of the DPWH.’

Finance Secretary Ralph Recto agreed with that observation. Earlier, he said that if billions of pesos were not lost in that scandal, the economy might have grown by around 6 percent to 6.2 percent and revenue collections would have been higher.

Tax payments

The decline in tax payments should not come as a surprise. It may even be described as late in coming, considering the magnitude of the plunder and the manner by which it was committed.

It was a gut reaction by taxpayers to undeniable reports that some lawmakers had conspired with private contractors in funding ‘ghost’ and substandard flood control projects and pocketing the bulk of the money.

As things turned out later, the embezzlement of taxpayers’ money appears to have also involved health centers, farm-to-market roads and public schools and counting. The greed was simply overwhelming.

To aggravate matters and in a clear display of entitlement, some of the children of those lawmakers publicly flaunted the ‘fruits’ of their parents’ plunder.

Seeing hard-earned money paid as taxes squandered and made to pay for the lavish lifestyle of corrupt lawmakers and government officials is sufficient reason (if not justification) for distressed taxpayers to look for and resort to ways and means to push back and be less diligent with their tax obligations without running afoul of the law.

Corruption

Participation in mass demonstrations denouncing corruption in government was not enough. The disgust over the abuse of legislative power had to be expressed by sending a strong message of protest to the national leadership.

Refusing to pay taxes is out of the question because it could result in civil and criminal liabilities. And our courts have consistently deferred to the BIR in its strict enforcement of revenue laws on the ground that ‘taxes are the lifeblood of the State.’

But tax avoidance (or the practice where taxpayers avail of provisions in the law to minimize their tax obligations) is perfectly legal. It is a virtual science in tax courses.

Accountants and tax lawyers with keen eyes and minds can easily spot areas in business that, after compliance with proper documentation, can legitimately claim tax deductions or tax credits.

It is a zero-sum game that makes the BIR squirm with discomfort because loopholes in tax laws cannot be closed through the issuance of memorandum circulars or revenue regulations.

And rather than go through a lengthy court process it is not sure of winning, and pressed to meet its annual revenue quota, the BIR is often forced to compromise to reduce the adverse effects of a tax avoidance scheme allowed by law.

If that approach is unavailable, a taxpayer agitated by the waste of his or her money could hold in abeyance his or her payment until the deadline date or close to it or, where permitted, pay in installments over a fixed period of time.

In the latter case, that means (tongue in cheek) less money is made available to be touched by the sticky hands of government personnel entrusted with the management of that money.

Taxpayer dissatisfaction

Although no losses are incurred by just-on-time payment, a subliminal message is being sent to the government about the taxpayer’s dissatisfaction with the way his or her money is being openly stolen by corrupt government officials.

There is no question that it is the patriotic duty of every Filipino to pay his or her taxes to the government, but it is equally his or her patriotic duty to protest and push back if his or her money is being squandered for the benefit of lawmakers who consider it their birth right to take advantage of their position at the expense of the public welfare. INQ

Motorists traveling across Luzon’s expressways will now need only one RFID sticker.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Tuesday launched the Toll Collection System Interoperability Project, branded as ‘One RFID, All Tollways,’ which integrates previously separate payment systems.

The president directed the Department of Transportation (DOTr) and the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) to ensure smoother travel using a single RFID account for all expressways in Luzon.

‘We are listening to the concerns of our fellow Filipinos. That’s why we studied the problem and found a good solution,’ Marcos said in Filipino during the launch in Calamba, Laguna.

‘From now on, only one RFID sticker is needed for all toll expressways across Luzon. Group and fleet accounts will also be launched next year,’ he added.

Marcos said the reform is part of a broader goal to modernize and connect infrastructure while responding to the needs of Filipinos. ‘Our goal is a direct journey from north to south across Luzon-reducing unnecessary stress and delays,’ he said in Filipino.

Acting Transportation Secretary Giovanni Lopez said motorists may choose between Autosweep or Easytrip to pass through major expressways, including NLEX, SCTEX, CAVITEX, C5 Southlink, CALAX, TPLEX, Skyway, Skyway Stage 3, SLEX, NAIAX, MCX, and STAR Tollway.

‘It has already undergone a stress test, which means it’s working. If there are small instances of problems, it might be because the RFID is defective or the account has a negative balance,’ Lopez said.

He added that the new RFID sticker will be placed behind the windshield, replacing older headlight-mounted tags that often caused scanning delays. ‘Motorists might as well take this opportunity to avail of One RFID at no cost,’ Lopez said.

Motorists can opt in online or walk in at service centers to consolidate their RFID accounts. Registration is free and voluntary and drivers who prefer to keep both RFID accounts may do so.

‘If you’re satisfied with your current RFID setup, there’s no need to enroll. But for those who prefer to have only one account, they can enroll,’ TRB Executive Director Jose Arturo Tugade said.

Currently, only individual accounts are covered by the system, but the DOTr targets to include group or corporate accounts by early 2026.

Lopez thanked private partners such as the San Miguel Corporation (SMC) Group and the Manny V. Pangilinan (MVP) Group for aligning their systems to make the project possible.

‘With government help, we got the push to go over some technical issues,’ said Metro Pacific Investments Corp. chairman, president and CEO Manny V. Pangilinan.

‘Both MVP and I fully support tollway and infrastructure works to help improve our country,’ said SMC chairman and CEO Ramon S. Ang.

The Toll Collection Interoperability Project, first initiated in 2017, is a collaboration among the DOTr, TRB, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), and Land Transportation Office (LTO), in partnership with the SMC and Metro Pacific groups.

To register for One RFID, All Tollways, motorists need to follow these steps:

Opt in online and choose your preferred RFID service provider.

Remove the unselected RFID sticker at authorized customer service centers.

Load funds into your chosen RFID account.