The peoples’ rage! My personal anger

“We are a country enraged!” This is how I can best summarize the words of Professor Clarita Carlos when she was interviewed by two gentlemen anchors of the Manila station dwIZ which interview was carried live on stream thru the wonders of the internet. Wikipedia reports that Carlos is a political scientist, commentator, academic, and educator who last served as national security adviser under the administration of Pr

esident Ferdinand Marcos Jr., from 2022 to 2023.

Carlos actually verbalized my personal feeling of our national situation. I cannot assume that this is the same anger of our countrymen. The thoughts she expressed in the broadcast, even if spiced with laughter every now and then, were too profound for my ordinary man’s mind. So to avoid the risk of misreading or misrepresenting the complex socio-philosophical declarations which she spoke of, on air, I will talk, not of our countrymen’s rage, but of my own personal anger. Every bit of what is printed here in this column today is mine. I will not claim it as being uttered or felt by someone else. I will be held solely accountable for everything that I write here today.

It was on August 11, this year, 11 Mondays ago, that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., revealed that 15 contractors bagged more than ?100 billion worth of flood control projects during the first three years of his administration. President Marcos Jr., named the 15 contractors as: 1.) Legacy Construction Corporation. 2.) Alpha & Omega Gen. Contractor & Development Corp., 3.) St. Timothy Construction Corp., 4.) QM Builders, 5.) EGB Construction Corp. 6.) Topnotch Catalyst Builders Inc., 7.) Centerways Construction and Development Inc., 8.) Sunwest Inc., 9.) Hi-Tone Construction & Development Corp., 10.) Triple 8 Construction & Supply Inc., 11.) Royal Crown Monarch Construction & Supplies Corp., 12.) Wawao Builders, 13.) MG Samidan Construction, 14.) L.R. Tiqui Builders Inc., and 15) Road Edge Trading & Development Services.

Truthfully speaking, I was shocked, but not angered, (yet) that the government played favorites in choosing contractors to do highly-funded projects. I became simply curious to know why such favoritism, apparently unpublicized and clandestine if I may surmise, happened. As I followed the presidential exposé, investigations commenced. Legislative hearings unearthed lurid details of how billions of tax money went to corrupt pockets. Lawmakers, trained to be grandstanders, discovered, during such inquiries, new strategies of pillage. There were two privilege speeches of Senator Panfilo Lacson that pictured a kind of unprecedented plunder of peoples’ money by way of ghost and substandard projects involving some of the names of contractors mentioned by the president. Public funds were apparently channeled by our country’s top leaders. It was at that point when I personally began to feel the rage Carlos spoke about.

In the last two months, I have been repeatedly hearing the names of who these plundering conspirators are. There are contractors, bureaucrats, congressmen, and senators. To my horror, their intricate schemes have been exposed. The web of corruption, once buried deep in thousands of seemingly-inaccessible documents and protected by leeches holding high government positions, is now clear in my mind. But, even if their ways of public betrayal are now vivid, all of them, in the last two months, continue to flaunt the fruits of their thievery, enjoy the luxurious taste of their corrupt and evil deeds and, worse, walk with their despicably arrogant strides, amongst us the victims of their greed. To use Carlos words, “I am enraged.”

My rage can probably be appeased only if the initial names repeatedly mentioned in mainstream and social media and unraveled in legislative investigations like Discaya, Abellido, Quirante, Bagao, Hernandez, Alcantara, Beltran, Gardiola, Arbison, Romualdez, Co, Revilla, Villanueva, Escudero, Jinggoy are now made as accused in prosecutions for plunder and warrants for their immediate arrest issued. My anger may perhaps be mollified only if I see these personalities be, instead of roaming freely, jailed in dark prison chambers while awaiting final conviction. I ask no less and let it be immediate.