Zaldy targets Sandro; more ‘lies on cam,’ says Marcos son
This time, it’s the son of President Marcos who is being linked by resigned Ako Bicol Rep. Zaldy Co to alleged anomalies in the national budget.
On Tuesday, Co uploaded another video on his Facebook account, taking aim at Ilocos Norte Rep. Sandro Marcos for supposedly inserting at least P50 billion worth of public works projects in the 2023, 2024, and 2025 budgets.
“Every year, as soon as we get to the bicam (bicameral conference committee) budget process, Congressman Sandro always has instructions to insert his projects [in the budget],” said the former party list representative in the center of corruption issues involving flood control and other infrastructure projects of the government.
This was the first time that Marcos, who was senior deputy majority leader in the 19th Congress and currently majority floor leader in the 20th Congress, was named in Co’s videos.
The previous videos accused the President, former Speaker Martin Romualdez and other high-level Malacañang officials of orchestrating graft-ridden insertions in the budget as a source of kickbacks later.
Insertions generally refer to any change made from the National Expenditure Program (NEP) prepared by the Department of Budget and Management in the crafting of the general appropriations bill that is eventually enacted into law.
‘Fantastical, false’
The younger Marcos, in a statement posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, said the claims made by Co—whom he called as the “newly crowned champion of the DDS (diehard Duterte supporters)”—are “fantastical” and “false.”
According to the congressman, it seems that Co’s preferred escape route from the criminal cases awaiting him in the Philippines is to bring down the government.
“Anyone can sit in front of a camera from abroad and spew lies. The statements from the newly crowned champion of the DDS cabal, former Congressman Zaldy Co, are frankly as fantastical as they are false. I hope that the public can be reminded that we are talking of a person with no credibility whose vested interests are to release these videos to destabilize the government,” Marcos said.
Co, who has been abroad since the 20th Congress started its sessions in July, is among those charged in the Sandiganbayan with malversation and graft in relation to a substandard P289.5-million road dike project in Naujan, Oriental Mindoro. The project was funded by the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) 2024 budget and awarded to Sunwest Corp., a company linked to Co and his family.
“Evidently, the only path [Co] sees for himself is one where he stirs political chaos in the hope of escaping his own legal troubles. He wants to bring down the current administration so that he can be absolved of his crimes. In fact, the intel suggests he already struck a deal with those who stand to benefit from such a change,” Marcos said.
Preferred projects
Specifically, Co alleged that the young Marcos asked to insert P9.636 billion in 2023; P20.174 billion in 2024; and P21.127 billion in 2025. He also uploaded a list of documents to accompany his allegations, where he detailed the exact projects that Marcos supposedly had inserted into the budget, and what page in their corresponding General Appropriations Act (GAA) these could be found.
For 2023, a closer look at the documents showed that the projects were mostly in Ilocos Norte’s first congressional district which Marcos represents in Congress. Most of these involved road projects and multipurpose buildings.
For 2024, documents presented by Co showed that Marcos already made P5.988 billion worth of insertions at the NEP level—perhaps through what the DPWH called as “allocable budget” for lawmakers; P10.186 billion and P4 billion in two lists submitted to the bicameral conference committee level; and P2.474 billion in the unprogrammed appropriations.
In the 2025 budget, Marcos supposedly had P9.419 billion inserted in the NEP, P3.582 billion in the House general appropriations bill, P8.126 billion at the bicameral conference committee level; and P1.966 billion in the unprogrammed appropriations.
Across all three lists, majority of the projects appear to have gone to Ilocos Norte, the Marcoses’ stronghold, but there were also some that went to Baguio City and the provinces of Cebu, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Oriental Mindoro, and Davao de Oro, among others.
It is also a mix of project types—from road construction, rehabilitation and improvement, flood control to multipurpose buildings.
Notably, there were multiple projects that cost just P5 million and below. They included road rehabilitation or improvement projects, small water impounding projects, slope protections, multipurpose buildings or drainage structures.
Co, the House appropriations chair in the 19th Congress, alleged that when issues about the 2025 budget came out, the younger Marcos threatened to have him removed and charged because there were “some P8 billion worth of insertions that he (Marcos) wanted in, because there were already contractors who already (paid) their advance to him.”
“Because these projects were not inserted, he (Marcos) had to return the sums to them,” Co said.
But Marcos said the decision to remove Co was done by Congress as a collegial body—and because House lawmakers during the 19th Congress “caught wind of his insatiable greed and corruption.”
Call for probe
Hours after Co uploaded his latest video, the bloc composed of ACT Teachers Rep. Antonio Tinio, Gabriela Rep. Sarah Elago and Kabataan Rep. Renee Co filed House Resolution No. 515 urging the lower chamber to investigate both Co as well as Public Works Undersecretary Roberto Bernardo’s claims that other high-ranking Palace officials received kickbacks from insertions in the 2025 GAA.
In an interview with reporters, Tinio said they were concerned about a seeming attempt to cover up for President Marcos now that he was being implicated in the same anticorruption 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 allegationws are inching closer and closer to the president.”
