EDITORIAL - Flight means guilt

It’s not a legal or scientific way of establishing criminal culpability, but it has always been the case in the court of public opinion: flight is equated with guilt.

Every day that resigned Ako Bicol party-list congressman Elizaldy Co stays out of the country and out of sight reinforces the perception of guilt in the eyes of the public. The perception taints not only him, but also his party-list organization as well as his family members, particularly his brother and former Ako Bicol representative Christopher Co.

The brothers founded Sunwest Construction and Development Corp., now the diversified Sunwest group of companies, which is among the firms embroiled in the trillion-peso corruption scandal over substandard and non-existent or ghost projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways.

Zaldy Co, who chaired the powerful committee on appropriations of the House of Representatives during the 19th Congress, never attended a single session of the current 20th, from which he resigned on Sept. 29.

Apart from getting his side on accusations of conflict of interest and massive kickbacks, probers – and the public – also want Co to provide details on the budget proceedings that produced the 2025 General Appropriations Act. This GAA, which faces legal challenges before the Supreme Court, has been described by critics as the most corrupt budget ever.

To this day, no member of the 19th Congress has owned up to budget insertions – especially for flood control projects – that produced that most corrupt GAA.

No one is talking and there are no records of what happened between the submission of the 2025 National Expenditure Program by the executive and the top-secret bicameral conference, during which the participants mangled the NEP beyond recognition to fit personal agendas.

The Independent Commission for Infrastructure has summoned Zaldy Co twice – the second time yesterday – to shed light on the serious accusations hurled against him.

His continuing absence intensifies the heat on the person who outranks the head of the appropriations committee, the speaker of the House.

The flood control scandal has already cost Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez the post of House speaker. Both he and Co maintain their innocence, and have expressed confidence that they will be vindicated. The best way to do this is for Zaldy Co to emerge from hiding and face the accusations against him.