There was the Pharmally scandal that happened during the Covid-19 pandemic when the head of the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM), Lloyd Christopher Lao, who had previously worked at the Office of Presidential Assistant Bong Go, awarded government contracts totaling P11.5 billion to a very undercapitalized (P625,000) Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corp. The contracts were to supply face masks and shields, test kits, personal protection equipment (PPEs) and related items for the Covid-19 protection program.
There were clear irregularities in the procurement and delivery process. The COA flagged the transactions. The supplies were overpriced and/or defective and/or old/mislabeled inventories.
The Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chaired by Senator Richard Gordon conducted a probe that President Rodrigo Duterte openly opposed and blocked. Gordon concluded there was wrongdoing but his colleagues in the Senate refused to sign the Committee Report.
Nevertheless, the Ombudsman filed cases against several defendants led by Lloyd Christopher Lao.
The financing of these anomalous Pharmally transactions was traced to and facilitated by Michael Yang, the former Presidential Economic Adviser to then President Rodrigo Duterte.
Status: the Sandiganbayan has ruled to proceed with the graft case after being detoured by motions to quash, which were deemed finally on September 8, 2025.
Then there was Mary Grace Piattos. The Office of the Vice President Sara Duterte was allotted confidential and intelligence funds in the 2023 national budget in the amount of P125 million. More, if we include the intelligence funds allotted to the Department of Education which she then headed.
In the only accounting she made for the use of funds (in an incredibly short period of 11 days) she reported as recipients various fictitious or dubious names that were obviously from popular brands of snack foods. The House of Representatives, after public hearings, voted to use this as one of the grounds for her impeachment. The Senate, as impeachment court, delayed the proceedings. The case was brought to the Supreme Court, which declared the House’s impeachment process defective and unconstitutional.
Status: A Motion for Reconsideration has been filed and is pending, alleging that the Supreme Court decision was made on the basis of a wrong understanding of certain vital facts. An impressive group of legal luminaries (past Supreme Court Justices, members of the Constitutional Convention, several lawyer associations and law schools) have disagreed with the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision.
And now, the President of the Philippines himself, in his latest SONA, brings to the attention of Filipinos, the monstrous scandal of corruption in the granting of government flood control projects through criminal manipulations in the national budget process.
Responding to the loud public outcry for accountability, the President has formed an Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) to investigate and recommend measures to enforce such accountability.
Meantime, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee is conducting public hearings on these flood control projects, and is discovering the involvement of legislators, government officials, contractors and more. The House of Representatives has suspended its own investigations.
Meantime, the NBI has recommended the prosecution of 21 persons related to flood control projects including incumbent and past senators, congressmen, contractors and government engineers.
The revelations are dramatically unfolding in the ongoing Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chaired by Senator Panfilo ‘Ping’ Lacson.
Meantime, Baguio City Mayor Benjamin Magalong, appointed to the ICI as adviser, has suddenly resigned, after Malacañang announced they would review if he had a possible conflict of interest (he denies this), since the suspected criminal contractor Discaya had reported infrastructure project contracts with Baguio City. Malacañang had signaled its less-than-full trust, so the honorable thing to do was resign.
We Filipinos are all in the maw of all-engulfing darkness as we are witnessing revelations that for so long our own government leaders, officials and bureaucracy in conspiracy with public work contractors have been stealing public funds through various dubious schemes of ‘ghost’ non-existing projects, sub-standard and unfinished projects, over-pricing and money diversions to private pockets.
We have been betrayed, abused and raped by our senators, congressmen and public officials.
We are sinking in the cesspool of their excrement.